The Texas Supreme Court announced Friday it has decided to hear arguments in a case pitting SMU against a regional governing body of the United Methodist Church.
The United Methodist Church’s South Central Jurisdictional Conference, which oversees the church’s congregations in eight states including Texas, sued SMU, one of the denomination’s flagship universities, in 2019.
The lawsuit revolves around SMU’s decision to effectively declare itself independent from its regional overseers within the denomination. That decision came amid a split in the United Methodist Church over LGBTQ policies.
The Texas Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the case in January 2025. Jeffrey R. Parsons, a lawyer representing the conference, declined to comment Friday. Anthony de Bruyn, a spokesperson for SMU, said Friday the school does not comment on pending litigation.
In February 2019, the United Methodist Church voted to strengthen bans on gay weddings and pastors in gay relationships. That November, SMU changed its governing language to say the school is controlled by its own board, not the South Central Jurisdictional Conference.
The conference sued the school in December 2019, arguing that the university didn’t have the authority to update its governing language, and that the conference had the right to authorize or veto any potential updates to that language.
“This lawsuit has become necessary because of recent, unauthorized acts by representatives of SMU in violation of [the conference’s] rights,” according to the conference’s lawsuit.
In December 2019, SMU President R. Gerald Turner told The Dallas Morning News the school was preemptively distancing itself from its denomination ahead of an impending split over LGBTQ issues.
“We’re trying to get this done before the church decides what kind of split they’re going to have, so that we can continue to educate everybody from all Methodist denominations and from other denominations, and people who don’t believe at all,” he said in an interview.
Turner didn’t want the school’s Perkins School of Theology to be associated with one specific sect of Methodism, he said.
SMU remains committed to its nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ students, he said. “We do not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation,” he said. “We don’t discriminate against anybody. That can’t change.”
In December 2019, a representative of a state-wide group within the conference gave The News a statement on the conference’s lawsuit. “SMU’s actions jeopardize the over 100-year relationship between the two institutions by terminating the Conference’s rights and relationship with the University,” said Rev. Kim Jenne, director of Connectional Ministries for the Missouri Conference of the United Methodist Church.
“Changes to the relationship between the two organizations should happen through prayer, dialogue and discernment and do require the legislative action of the SCJC according to the 1996 articles of incorporation,” Jenne said.
In 2019, Turner told The News that state law allows the university to separate from the United Methodist Church. The Texas secretary of state gave the school permission to do so, and new policies governing nonprofits allow them to be fully controlled by their board of directors, he said.
In 2021, a Texas district judge ruled in favor of SMU, dismissing the conference’s lawsuit with prejudice.
The conference appealed the verdict, and Texas’ Fifth Court of Appeals reversed the dismissal in July 2023. Three judges ruled that the conference, as “SMU’s controlling parental entity,” had standing to challenge the school’s 2019 bylaw change, according to court documents.
As of Friday, the conference’s website said it owns three institutions, including SMU.
The legal battle between SMU and the conference comes amid a denomination-wide rift over LGBTQ policies that has seen the group lose about a quarter of its U.S. churches. About 30,000 United Methodist congregations have left the church since 2019, including 53 congregations in the North Texas Conference, according to an internal denomination report.
Adrian Ashford covers faith and religion in North Texas for The Dallas Morning News through a partnership with Report for America.
