Breakaway Episcopalians look to US high court

AP: “St. James Anglican, in the Diocese of Los Angeles, is one of several dozen individual parishes and four dioceses nationwide that voted to split from the national church after the 2003 consecration of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire . . .St. James has filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court . . .” in the battle for control of the parish property.

Petition for Certiorari: The Rector, Warden, and Vestryman of St. James v. The Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Los Angeles

QUESTIONS PRESENTED

1. Whether the California Supreme Court violated the First Amendment’s Establishment and Free Exercise clauses by interpreting a state statute to confer a special power on certain religious denominations to create trusts for their own benefit in the real property of affiliated local church corporations, solely by declaring that they have unilaterally enacted a post-hoc internal rule, when no other person or entity has such a power under state law?

2. Whether this Court’s reference in Jones v. Wolf, 443 U.S. 595 (1979), to denominational canons and constitutions as potential sources of neutral principles of property law can be read, consistently with the First Amendment, as trumping other secular laws governing property rights?