Key Points

  • The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia granted a writ of prohibition barring enforcement of a Mercer County Circuit Court order that had reopened a suit by 33 local United Methodist churches against the West Virginia Conference.
  • The court held that the fraud-or-collusion exception to ecclesiastical abstention applies only to fraud or collusion that procured a final adjudication by a church tribunal, and the churches alleged none.
  • The court held that the churches' claims would require a civil court to interpret the Book of Discipline and Judicial Council decisions on disaffiliation, which the First Amendment and article III, section 15 of the West Virginia Constitution forbid.
  • The court held that Rule 59(e) cannot be used to reopen a case after a court correctly determines it lacks subject matter jurisdiction.
  • The court held that the circuit court erred by applying a Rule 12(b)(6) pleading standard, treating the fraud allegations as jury questions, to the Rule 12(b)(1) jurisdictional question.

West Virginia's highest court on Wednesday stopped a Mercer County judge from reviving a lawsuit by 33 local United Methodist churches that accused their regional conference of misleading them until it was too late to leave the denomination with their buildings. The court held that the dispute turns on church law, which the state and federal constitutions bar civil courts from deciding.

The Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia granted the West Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church a writ of prohibition, an order from a higher court that stops a lower court from acting beyond its jurisdiction. Justice Trump delivered the opinion of the court. The writ bars enforcement of a March 13, 2026, circuit court order that had vacated an earlier dismissal and put the case back on the active docket.

The decision limits a carve-out to ecclesiastical abstention, the doctrine under which civil courts defer to a hierarchical church's own tribunals on matters of doctrine and governance. The court held that the carve-out, known as the fraud-or-collusion exception, reaches only fraud or collusion used to procure a church tribunal's final decision. It also held that a court that correctly finds it lacks jurisdiction cannot reopen the case under Rule 59(e) of the West Virginia Rules of Civil Procedure, which lets a party ask a court to alter or amend a judgment.

The fight grew out of a doctrinal split within the denomination over the ordination of gay clergy and the performance of same-sex weddings. Under the church's Trust Clause, the property of every local church is held in trust for the entire denomination. In February 2019 the church adopted a temporary provision, Paragraph 2553 of its Book of Discipline, that let congregations leave for reasons of conscience and keep their property if they met conditions including a two-thirds vote of members. It expired on Dec. 31, 2023.

According to the complaint, conference representatives told the churches in or around August 2022 that they did not qualify to leave under Paragraph 2553. The representatives allegedly said there was no need to decide before the church's May 2024 General Conference and that the churches could later leave with their property under Paragraph 2549, a provision governing church closures. When the churches tried to leave after that meeting, the conference told them they would have to surrender their property.

The Judicial Council, the church's highest legal body, ruled five months after that meeting that Paragraph 2549 "cannot be construed or used as legislation permitting the gracious exit of local churches." The churches then sued the conference on claims including fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract and conspiracy.

The circuit court first dismissed the suit for lack of subject matter jurisdiction. After the case was reassigned to a different judge, the court granted the churches' Rule 59(e) motion, ruling that their fraud and collusion allegations raised factual questions for a jury. The petition named Judge Mark Wills of the Mercer County Circuit Court as a respondent.

Justice Trump wrote that the first ruling, which the opinion called "a detailed and well-reasoned decision," was correct. Deciding the churches' claims, the court said, would require the circuit court to determine what the Discipline permitted and whether the conference properly applied it. "Characterizing a difference of opinion over the meaning of the Discipline's provisions as a false statement does not confer jurisdiction upon a secular court to decide the underlying ecclesiastical question," the opinion said.

The court held that the exception, drawn from its own 1970s precedents, turns on the words "procured by." That phrase, Justice Trump wrote, "anchors the allegedly fraudulent or collusive misconduct to the ecclesiastical adjudication itself." The churches did not allege that the Judicial Council's decision was procured by fraud or that conference officials colluded with the council. "Those allegations therefore do not bring this case within the narrow exception to ecclesiastical abstention recognized in our law," the court held.

The court rejected the churches' argument that alleging fraud or collusion is enough to require a civil court to hear a case. That reading, Justice Trump wrote, "creates a linguistic workaround that swallows the rule by transforming an ecclesiastical dispute into a justiciable civil action merely by alleging a church official misrepresented, misinterpreted, concealed, or improperly applied church law." The court said it could find no case in which any American court had used the exception to take jurisdiction over a dispute involving a religious institution.

The opinion stressed that "the mere involvement of a church in a case does not place a dispute beyond the reach of the civil courts," which may decide secular disputes by applying neutral principles of law. The churches' claims, the court held, could not be resolved that way.

On the procedural question, the court held that the circuit court had no power to reopen the case once it correctly found it lacked jurisdiction. "Rule 59(e) provides a procedure for seeking alteration or amendment of a judgment; it does not confer subject matter jurisdiction that the court otherwise lacks," Justice Trump wrote.

The court added that on reconsideration the circuit court had tested whether the complaint stated a claim before deciding the threshold question of whether it could hear the case at all. "The constitutional limits on the civil courts' authority cannot be avoided by recasting an ecclesiastical dispute as a factual question for a jury," the opinion said.

Lawyers for the conference included Wendy G. Adkins of Jackson Kelly, PLLC; the local churches were represented by David C. Gibbs III of Gibbs Law Firm.

The writ prohibits enforcement of the March 13 order reopening the case. The court concluded that because the alleged fraud and collusion did not concern how a final church adjudication was obtained, the Circuit Court of Mercer County "lacks authority to proceed."