During their private conference on Friday, the justices are expected to consider a petition for review in a church-property dispute that raises interesting First Amendment questions.
The case, Family Federation for World Peace and Unification International v. Moon, is one of many that arose around the time of the death of the Unification Church’s founder, Sun Myung Moon, in 2012. It is focused on control of Unification Church International, which the petition describes as a “financial support nonprofit organization that the Church created to hold some of its most valuable assets.”
In the lawsuit, a group of church members accused those who directed UCI just before Moon’s death, including Moon’s son Hyun Jin “Preston” Moon, of, among other things, unlawfully amending UCI’s articles of incorporation and mishandling UCI funds, including by giving “its ‘most valuable assets’ away to a Swiss entity, Kingdom Investments Foundation,” that was not affiliated with the church. The group is seeking control of UCI and recovery of lost assets.
Preston Moon and other UCI directors have contended that the lawsuit stems from theological concerns, rather than legal ones. They assert that Sun Myung Moon recognized Preston Moon as his religious successor before his death, thereby empowering him to make the changes to UCI that led to the lawsuit.
For nearly 15 years, the case has been bouncing back and forth between lower courts that have disagreed over whether allowing it to proceed would violate the First Amendment. In 2022, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals reversed and vacated a trial court ruling against the UCI directors, holding that the trial court’s decision “turned on deciding disputed questions of religious doctrine and purpose” that were “nonjusticiable under the First Amendment[]” because they required the court to pick a side in a theological, rather than legal, dispute. The trial court then dismissed the church members’ remaining claims, and the D.C. Court of Appeals affirmed the dismissal last year, prompting the group of church members to appeal to the Supreme Court.
In their petition for review, the church members contend that the D.C. Court of Appeals applied an “overexpansive reading[]” of the First Amendment. Courts can examine “church-related facts,” including documents outlining a church’s structure and mission, without violating religious freedom, and that kind of permissible examination is what’s required in this case, they say. The church members further argue that the lower court’s decision has left them “remediless,” and urge the justices “to ensure that churches are not denied recourse when their property is fraudulently taken.”
For their part, the UCI directors maintain that “this dispute was never one civil courts could adjudicate” because of the ongoing dispute over who controls the Unification Church and affiliated entities. While the Supreme Court in the past has said that courts can weigh in on church-property disputes when it’s clear who has authority over the church because such disputes don’t hang on theological questions, that is not the case here, the directors argue.
Family Federation for World Peace and Unification International v. Moon is scheduled to be considered by the justices for the first time at their private conference on Friday.