A.S. Haley: Virginia Supreme Court Sends Case Back to Trial Court; California Supreme Court Accepts St. James Case for Review

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Lots of legal news to cover today: I shall begin with the news from Virginia.

In a unanimous opinion filed today, five justices of the Supreme Court of Virginia (the others having recused themselves) interpreted Virginia's "division statute", § 57-9 of the Virginia Code, about which I wrote in this earlier post, in such a way as to find that its requirements had not been fully satisfied by the nine dissenting parishes which had withdrawn from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia. Because they found the statute inapplicable to the situation on the ground in Virginia, they did not reach the arguments made by ECUSA and the Diocese of Virginia that the statute violated the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment, as well as the Due Process Clause and the Takings Clause (both applied to the States via the Fourteenth Amendment).

The justices held that the trial court's interpretation of a key term in the statute had been erroneous, and so reversed its decision in favor of the nine parishes which had voted to withdraw from the Diocese and form the Anglican District of Virginia (ADV), a branch of CANA ("Convocation of Anglicans in North America") which is affiliated with the (Anglican) Church of Nigeria and with the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA). They voted to send the case back to Fairfax County Circuit Court for further proceedings in the actions for declaratory relief filed by ECUSA and the Diocese, along with the counterclaims in those actions filed by the CANA congregations.

the rest