Southern Methodist University Continues Battle to Cut Ties With UMC
Its appeal was granted by the Texas Supreme Court.
Southern Methodist University (SMU) has been seeking to assert its autonomy from the United Methodist Church since 2019.
The Texas Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal of the case to determine whether the university can cut its ties with the United Methodist Church’s South Central Jurisdictional Conference (SCJC), which runs the church’s congregations in eight states, including Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Missouri and Nebraska.
The SCJC sued SMU in 2019 in Dallas County District Court after SMU’s board of trustees voted in November of 2019 to divest the SCJC of its rights and “to make clear that SMU is solely maintained and controlled by its board as the ultimate authority for the University,” WFAA reported.
Former SMU Professor of Theology Scott Jones intervened in the lawsuit and was removed from the SMU board of trustees soon after. Jones dissented to the November 2019 decision to change SMU’s articles of incorporation that deleted references to the SCJC’s authority to approve trustee nominations and school land sales and leases. Jones has now joined the more conservative Global Methodist Church.
In the lawsuit, the SCJC claims to have founded SMU in 1911 and placed the assets of SMU in trust for the benefit of the SCJC in 1924. In 1996, the adopted restated articles of incorporation again acknowledged the university’s relationship with the SCJC.
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After the UMC voted to affirm the “traditional plan” in February 2019, which continued the denomination’s ban on the ordination and “marriage” of people who identify as LGBTQ, SMU’s board of trustees amended its articles of incorporation to “effectively terminate the long-standing and permanent relationship between SMU and SCJC,” the lawsuit states.
The district court ruled in favor of SMU in 2021, but the SCJC appealed to the Texas Fifth Court of Appeals, who then ruled in favor of the SCJC.
“In this case of first impression, we must determine whether a nonprofit corporation like SMU, whose governing documents provide that it is to be ‘forever owned, maintained and controlled’ by the conference and that no amendments to said articles ‘shall ever be made’ without the conference’s prior approval, can unilaterally amend the articles to remove these provisions and all other references to the conference,” the July 2023 opinion stated.
Oral arguments at the Texas Supreme Court are scheduled for January 2025.
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