Trouble in Vineville: church property and the civil courts

During the past century the U.S. Supreme COurt has developed a "deference" approach to resolving church property disputes in civil courts. This approach requires a civil court to defer to the decisions of the appropriate superior body in a hierarchical church, absent allegations of fraud or collusion by the church. In the late 1970s, a parallel approach developed, whereby a civil court may resolve church property disputes by applying neutral principles of property law. Insofar as the property documents contain express assertions of church law to be applied in disputes, those laws will be followed. If the church documents are silent, the civil court will not have recourse to other church documents but will decide the matter for itself. This, of course, could result in the civil court deciding contrary to the church tribunal. Both the deference approach and the neutral-principles approach satisfy the demands of the First Amendment because neither, the Supreme Court has said, interferes with the free exercise of religion nor unduly establishes a religion. A strong four-justice dissent in a recent decision may, however, signal trouble ahead for the neutral-principles approach.