Texas high court allows Methodist Church to fight SMU split

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the United Methodist Church, or UMC, can sue for control over Southern Methodist University. Lawyers for the school and the church’s South Central Jurisdictional Conference argued the case in January amid a more than five-year legal battle. The church in 2019 sued the Dallas-based university after the private institution changed its articles of incorporation to distance itself from the denomination. In the new articles, the school said the board of trustees held authority rather than the UMC.

What did the court say? In the majority opinion, Texas Supreme Court Justice Debra Lehrmann said the church had the authority to sue the school for breach of contract. The UMC claims it is a third-party beneficiary of the contract created by the school’s articles between SMU and the state. Lehrmann also rejected the claim that SMU knowingly filed false paperwork when it changed its governing documents. Meanwhile, Justice Jane Bland partially dissented, saying that a nonprofit’s charter does not give third-party beneficiary status and that the court had gone a step too far in its ruling.

What did SMU and the UMC say? The university cheered the court’s decision to drop the false-filing claim and said it was prepared to defend its decision to separate from the Methodist church, according to a statement to The Texas Tribune. In a statement Friday, the UMC called the ruling a win and claimed it supported the church’s position that the school could not leave the denomination without approval from the church. Representatives for the UMC also said the school is home to the Perkins School of Theology, one of the approved United Methodist seminaries, and that it receives funding from local churches. The Bridwell Library also houses the entire collection of the World Methodist Museum.

Why did SMU try to leave? The university said it would distance itself from the denomination after the UMC decided to uphold a Biblical definition of marriage. That decision barred people who identified as LGBTQ from serving as members of the clergy and from being married in the church. Though the UMC last year removed the prohibitions, the school has not moved to return to the denomination.

Dig deeper: Read my report about the lawsuit ahead of oral arguments before the Texas Supreme Court.