TX Supreme Court Denies Rehearing in ECUSA Cases
By A.S. Haley
Today the Texas Supreme Court
denied the losing parties' petitions for rehearing in the two ECUSA cases
pending before it: No. 11-0265, Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, et al. v. The
Episcopal Church, et al.; and No. 11-0332, Masterson v. Diocese of Northwest
Texas. The Court had delivered its opinions in the two cases last August 30. In
the first case, the Court had sided with Bishop Iker's Diocese by a closely
split vote of 5-4, reversed the summary judgment of Circuit Judge John Chupp
which had awarded all of the property and assets of Bishop Iker's Diocese to
the Episcopal Church and its rump diocese, and sent the case back to the trial
court. The majority held that the trial court had improperly failed to apply a
"neutral principles of law" analysis to the issues. The four
dissenters did not disagree with that result, but instead believed that the
Court lacked jurisdiction to hear a direct appeal from the trial court's
judgment in the case.
In the second case, the Court by a vote of 7-2 reversed the
Court of Appeals' decision requiring the Church of the Good Shepherd in San
Angelo to turn over its building and all other assets to the Diocese of
Northwest Texas. The Court definitively ruled that all Texas courts must follow
"neutral principles of law" (rather than deferring to an
ecclesiastical hierarchy), and that based on such an analysis, the Dennis Canon
was not effective under Texas law (or that if it were effective to create a
trust, the trust was not expressly irrevocable, and so could be revoked by the
parish in question)...Read more.
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