Federal court considers S.C. Episcopal division

posted June 7, 2013

CHARLESTON — Attorneys for two factions of South Carolina Episcopalians made their case Thursday to a federal judge over the proper venue for their legal battle — state or federal court.
In a courtroom jammed with more than two dozen attorneys, U.S. District Judge C. Weston Houck heard arguments arising from the Episcopal schism in eastern South Carolina.

Last year, the conservative Diocese of South Carolina separated from the more liberal national Episcopal Church over a variety of theological issues, among them gay marriage and the consecration of homosexual bishops.

It then sued in state court seeking to protect the use of its name and a half billion dollars’ worth of property controlled by its parishes. State Circuit Court Judge Diane Goodstein later issued an injunction saying only the parishes that left the denomination may use the name the Diocese of South Carolina. the rest

A.S. Haley: Decision Time in South Carolina
Today is the day that Senior Federal District Judge Houck hears oral arguments from counsel on the motion by Bishop Mark Lawrence, his Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina and more than three dozen parishes to remand (“send back”) the lawsuit they began last January to South Carolina’s Circuit Court in Dorchester County. I reviewed the history of this increasingly complex litigation in this post, and will not repeat it here.

Essentially, what is at issue on the motion to remand is whether or not the Court can fairly read the Lawrence State court complaint to state a “claim or controversy” under the laws of the United States, so that the case could have been brought initially in the federal Court. One would think that a complaint based only upon State trademark law would be left to the State courts to decide, but ECUSA and its Potemkin diocese saw things differently. ECUSA has not done well in the South Carolina State courts, and so they wanted desperately to have the federal courts take jurisdiction of the dispute over who owns the rights to the name “Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina.”

If the judge decides to keep the case in his court, then it will be consolidated with the federal lawsuit begun by Bishop vonRosenberg against Mark Lawrence personally, under the federal trademark law (called the “Lanham Act”). But if he does not—if Judge Houck sends Bishop Lawrence’s case back to State court, then look for him to stay the Lanham Act lawsuit until the State court resolves the trademark issues first (since that lawsuit was filed first)....