37 Maryland churches suing UMC over property dispute suffer another court loss
An appeals court panel in Maryland ruled against 37 churches that sued a regional body of the United Methodist Church (UMC), claiming its process of charging churches 50% of their assessed property value to leave the Mainline Protestant denomination was unfair.
A three-judge panel of the Appellate Court of Maryland issued a ruling earlier this week in the case of The Methodist Church of Cape St. Claire et al. v. The Baltimore Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, Inc., et al.
Judge Douglas Nazarian wrote the opinion, which the court unanimously upheld, against the departing churches. The panel concluded that secular courts lacked jurisdiction to resolve an internal church dispute.
“Resolving the claims alleged in this case would require a trial court to examine the UMC’s religious doctrine and the Conference’s management of church resources in a manner prohibited by the First Amendment,” Nazarian wrote.
“Because a secular court could not conduct such an examination using neutral principles of law, the UMC’s internal governing bodies are the only entities with authority to resolve the Local Churches’ claims.”
The Baltimore-Washington Conference emailed The Christian Post a brief statement from Bishop LaTrelle Miller Easterling, who supported the appellate panel’s decision.
“I’m heartened that the trust clause that has been part of The United Methodist Church since our inception has been upheld,” said Easterling.
The trust clause in the UMC’s Book of Discipline states that local church properties are held in trust for the denomination.
When CP asked what the conference plans to do with the properties once they are secured, a spokesperson said the regional body was “in a season of prayerful discernment regarding the future of these church properties.”
CP reached out to the attorney representing the plaintiff congregations. This article will be updated if a response is received.
For decades, the UMC was embroiled in a divisive debate over whether to amend its Book of Discipline to allow same-sex unions and the ordination of noncelibate homosexuals.
Although efforts to change the rules always failed, many progressive leaders refused to follow or enforce the Book of Discipline, drawing the ire of many conservative congregations and leaders.
In 2019, at a special session of the UMC General Conference, delegates voted to add a temporary measure to the Book of Discipline that allowed churches to leave the UMC over the ongoing debate. From 2019 until the measure expired at the end of 2023, about 7,500 mostly conservative churches left the denomination. In 2024, General Conference delegates voted to allow same-sex marriage and the ordination of openly gay clergy, though they still allow parts of the global UMC to maintain the bans.
The Baltimore-Washington Conference required disaffiliating churches to pay 50% of the tax-assessed property value. The aggregate total in property tax payments the conference would receive from nearly two dozen churches seeking to disaffiliate at the time was estimated to be around $10.8 million, over $4 million of which came from one larger church.
In March 2023, while the temporary disaffiliation process was in effect, the congregations sued the Baltimore-Washington Conference, arguing that the regional body implemented the process unfairly.
Judge Michael Malone of the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County sided with the conference in an October 2024 opinion. He agreed with the conference’s claim that the denomination held “an irrevocable trust” over UMC properties, including the buildings of the congregations seeking to disaffiliate.
“Maryland law provides that trust is presumed irrevocable unless ‘the power to revoke has been reserved,’” Malone wrote at the time. “And there is no language in the trust clauses in the Discipline reserving the right to revoke. Thus, the trust created is irrevocable.”
One of the plaintiffs in the case, who requested anonymity, emailed CP a statement in 2024 expressing disappointment with the order and accusing the conference of “financial malfeasance, greed, and unjust harm toward the local congregations.”
“Most of, if not all, the local congregations in this case have never received any financial support from the Baltimore-Washington Conference and have built and maintained their properties from the sacrificial giving of their congregants,” he said.
“And yet the Conference chooses to act akin to Pharaoh in the book of Exodus and the scribes whom Christ Himself speaks of in Luke 20:45-47. While this decision from Judge Malone, who himself is a United Methodist layperson and opted not to recuse himself from this case, is a bit of a momentum killer, we will consult our legal counsel to discern what our next steps might be.”
