A Maryland appeals court has rejected a challenge brought by 37 churches against the United Methodist Church’s Baltimore-Washington Conference over property and financial requirements connected to leaving the denomination.
According to The Christian Post, a three-judge panel of the Appellate Court of Maryland unanimously ruled in 'The Methodist Church of Cape St. Claire et al. v. The Baltimore Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, Inc., et al.'
Writing for the court, Judge Douglas Nazarian said the dispute could not be resolved by a secular court without becoming involved in questions of church doctrine and internal governance.
“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 UMC’s Book of Discipline provides that local church property is held in trust for the denomination.
Under the Baltimore-Washington Conference’s disaffiliation terms, departing churches were required to pay 50% of their tax-assessed property value. Payments from nearly two dozen congregations seeking to leave were estimated at about $10.8 million, including more than $4 million from one larger church.
The congregations sued the conference in March 2023, contending that the temporary disaffiliation process had been implemented unfairly.
In October 2024, a lower court ruled in favor of the conference and found that the denomination held an irrevocable trust interest in the properties of local churches. The appeals court has now left that result in place after concluding that secular courts lacked jurisdiction over the dispute.
The case developed amid broader divisions within the UMC over same-sex marriage and the ordination of noncelibate gay clergy.
In 2019, the denomination approved a temporary process allowing congregations to disaffiliate over disputes related to sexuality. About 7,500 mostly conservative churches left the UMC before that provision expired at the end of 2023.
The UMC General Conference later voted in 2024 to permit same-sex marriage and the ordination of openly gay clergy, while allowing some regions of the global denomination to continue maintaining more traditional restrictions.
