KNOW THE LAW (Rulings) & KNOW OUR 1^st AMENDMENT RIGHTS

By Jon Coyne

A lawsuit has been filed against officers of the LCMS and against the LCMS itself. Jesus First supporters have sent in the following case law citations. It is important for all of us to know the civil law rulings and our rights under civil law. We are not providing commentary on these legal rulings, since they seem to speak clearly.

Missouri Court of Appeals Western District

State of Missouri ex rel., John R. Gaydos, Bishop of the Diocese of Jefferson City, Father Jerry Kaimann, and Sister Ann Marie Bonvie, Relators, v. Channing D. Blaeuer, Special Judge, Circuit Court of Howard County, Missouri, Respondent.
Case Number: WD60120
Handdown Date: 05/21/2002

“On appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Illinois Supreme Court, holding that the courts cannot intervene, arbitrariness notwithstanding, because there is no jurisdiction under the constitution. Echoing Watson v. Jones, supra, the court declared that civil courts "are bound to accept the decisions of the highest judicatories of a religious organization of hierarchical polity on matters of discipline, faith, internal organization, or ecclesiastical rule, custom or law." Id. at 713. The court, holding that civil probing into such church matters may prove too entangling, also noted that secular notions of "fundamental fairness" cannot be borrowed from civil law and impressed upon internal church governance without violating the First Amendment. Id.
at 714-15.
In these cases, the court declared that civil courts are forbidden to exercise jurisdiction over issues that require interference in the affairs of religious associations, including matters of doctrine, discipline, ordination and removal of personnel, and religious practice and polity.”

U.S. Supreme Court

KEDROFF v. ST. NICHOLAS CATHEDRAL, 344 U.S. 94 (1952)

“Ours is a government which by the "law of its being" allows no statute, state or national, that prohibits the free exercise of religion. There are occasions when civil courts must draw lines between the responsibilities of church and state for the disposition or use of property. 25 Even in those cases when the property right follows as an incident from decisions of the church custom or law on ecclesiastical [344 U.S. 94, 121]   issues, the church rule controls. 26 This under our Constitution necessarily follows in order that there may be free exercise of religion.”

U.S. Supreme Court

SERBIAN ORTHODOX DIOCESE v. MILIVOJEVICH, 426 U.S. 696 (1976)

"In short, the First and Fourteenth Amendments permit hierarchical religious organizations to establish their own rules and regulations for internal discipline and government, and to create tribunals for adjudicating disputes over these matters. When this choice is exercised and ecclesiastical tribunals are created to decide disputes over [426 U.S. 696, 725] the government and direction of subordinate bodies, the Constitution requires that civil courts accept their decisions as binding upon them."

“We have concluded that whether or not there is room for "marginal civil court review" under the narrow rubrics of "fraud" or "collusion" when church tribunals act in bad faith for secular purposes, 7 no "arbitrariness" exception - in the sense of an inquiry whether the decisions of the highest ecclesiastical tribunal of a hierarchical church complied with church laws and regulations - is consistent with the constitutional mandate that civil courts are bound to accept the decisions of the highest judicatories of a religious organization of hierarchical polity on matters of discipline, faith, internal organization, or ecclesiastical rule, custom, or law. For civil courts to analyze whether the ecclesiastical actions of a church judicatory are in that sense "arbitrary" must inherently entail inquiry into the procedures that canon or ecclesiastical law supposedly requires the church judicatory to follow, or else into the substantive criteria by which they are supposedly to decide the ecclesiastical question. But this is exactly the inquiry that the First Amendment prohibits; recognition of such an exception would undermine the general rule that religious controversies are not the proper subject of civil court inquiry, and that a civil court must accept the ecclesiastical decisions of church tribunals as it finds them. Watson itself requires our conclusion in its rejection of the analogous argument that ecclesiastical decisions of the highest church judicatories need only be accepted if the subject matter of the dispute is within their "jurisdiction."

U.S. Supreme Court

Watson v. Jones (1871)

“In this country the full and free right to entertain any religious belief, to practice any religious principle, and to teach any religious doctrine which does not violate the laws of morality and property, and which does not infringe personal rights, is conceded to all. The law knows no heresy, and is committed to the support of no dogma, the establishment of no sect. The right to organize voluntary religious associations to assist in the expression and dissemination of any religious doctrine, and to create tribunals for the decision of controverted questions of faith within the association, and for the ecclesiastical government of all the individual members, congregations, and officers within the general association, is unquestioned. All who unite themselves to such a body do so with an implied consent to this government, and are bound to submit to it. But it would be a vain consent and would lead to the total subversion of such religious bodies, if any one aggrieved by one of their decisions could appeal to the secular [344 U.S. 94, 115]   courts and have them reversed. It is of the essence of these religious unions, and of their right to establish tribunals for the decision of questions arising among themselves, that those decisions should be binding in all cases of ecclesiastical cognizance, subject only to such appeals as the organism itself provides for." Id., at 728-729.