Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth v. Episcopal Church
| Decision Date | 30 August 2013 |
| Docket Number | No. 11-0265,11-0265 |
| Parties | THE EPISCOPAL DIOCESE OF FORT WORTH, ET AL., PETITIONERS, v. THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH, ET AL., RESPONDENTS |
| Court | Texas Supreme Court |
JUSTICE WILLETT, joined by JUSTICE LEHRMANN, JUSTICE BOYD and JUSTICE DEVINE, dissenting.
Until 1940, when Texans amended their constitution, the Supreme Court of Texas lacked any authority to decide direct appeals (i.e., appeals that leapfrog the court of appeals and pass directly to this Court). Four years later, the Legislature first exercised its new power to permit direct appeals, and in the sixty-nine years since, this Court has exercised that jurisdiction sparingly, only forty-three times. The reason is simply stated: Our direct-appeal jurisdiction is exceedingly narrow and only proper if the trial court granted or denied an injunction "on the ground of the constitutionality of a statute of this state."1
Today's direct appeal is directly unappealable. The trial court's order nowhere mentions any constitution or statute, much less the constitutionality of a statute. Indeed, the trial court statedverbally that it was not pivoting on the constitutionality of state law. This dispute undoubtedly has a First Amendment overlay, but for a direct appeal, constitutionality must exist not just in the ether, but in the order.
As the trial court did not determine "the constitutionality of a statute of this state," its injunction could hardly be issued "on the ground of the constitutionality of a statute of this state." Accordingly, we lack jurisdiction. As I have underscored before (albeit, like today, in a dissent):
Ultimately, it falls to us, the courts, to police our own jurisdiction. It is a responsibility rooted in renunciation, a refusal to exert power over disputes not properly before us. Rare is a government official who disclaims power, but liberties are often secured best by studied inaction rather than hurried action.2
The merits in this case are unquestionably important—and thankfully they are resolved today in a companion case3—but here the Court can only reach them by overreaching. We have no jurisdiction to decide this case as a direct appeal. I would dismiss for want of jurisdiction, and because the Court does otherwise, I respectfully dissent.
The trial court in this case issued two injunctions, requiring the defendants (now styling themselves as the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth):
The court's reasons for granting the injunctions are laid out in paragraphs one through three of its order:
(citations omitted).
There are no findings of fact or conclusions of law attached. The order does not mention the United States Constitution, the Texas Constitution, or any particular state statute. The only possible allusion to a statute is to "nonprofit corporations law," which the trial court found the defendants could not "invok[e]" to "avoid [their] obligations to the larger church." The trial court's legal support for this conclusion was a string citation to a number of cases, not a citation to any constitutional provision.
What is more, the defendants asked the trial court to amend the order to specify that the court had held a statute unconstitutional. The court declined to do so, orally stating that its ruling was based not on constitutionality, but rather on its application of Brown v. Clark4:
I still can't just craft something to make it go to the Supreme Court. I mean, it - my understanding was that the - the trust laws that you were talking about don't apply in this situation because of Brown, not because they're not constitutional.
Our decision in Brown relied heavily on Watson v. Jones.5 Watson, in turn, "appl[ied] not the Constitution but a 'broad and sound view of the relations of church and state under our system of laws.'"6
Nonetheless, the defendants filed a direct appeal. We noted probable jurisdiction and heard oral argument. But jurisdictional defects do not heal with age, no matter how novel, pressing, or consequential the issues at stake or how many judicial and party resources have been expended. The most fundamental restraint on judicial power is jurisdiction—our very authority to decide cases in the first place—and if we lack it, we lack it.
A 1940 constitutional amendment gave the Legislature power to grant direct appeals to this Court.7 Not until 1944, though, did the Legislature do so.8 The original conferral allowed direct appeals from injunctions based on two grounds, either (1) the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of a state statute, or (2) the validity or invalidity of certain state administrative orders.9 Today, the statutory grant of direct-appeal jurisdiction covers just one situation: "[A]n order of a trial court granting or denying an interlocutory or permanent injunction on the ground of the constitutionality of a statute of this state."10
I have found only forty-three cases where we have exercised direct-appeal jurisdiction. That is, while such jurisdiction has existed for nearly seventy years, we have exercised it stintingly. In twenty-four of the forty-three cases, our opinion made clear that the trial court either made a direct holding about a statute's constitutionality or issued declaratory relief that a statute was or was notconstitutional.11 In eleven other cases, the trial court's order clearly must have been based on constitutional grounds, either because the opinion implies that only constitutional issues were raised to the trial court12 or because the trial court granted an injunction enforcing a statute over constitutional objection, thus implicitly upholding the statute against constitutional attack.13 In two other cases, we summarily stated that the trial court granted or denied the injunction on the ground of a statute's constitutionality.14 But in at least six direct-appeal cases, we did not make it clear whywe thought the trial court's injunction was based on constitutional grounds.15 These cases address jurisdiction rather cursorily, and only one of the opinions garnered a dissent on the jurisdictional issue,16 to which the majority opinion declined to respond.17
But in the vast majority of cases where we have exercised direct-appeal jurisdiction, it has been abundantly clear that the trial court issued or denied an injunction on the ground of a statute's constitutionality.
We have also issued at least eleven opinions in which we dismissed attempted direct appeals for want of jurisdiction because the statutory test was not met.18 We have variously explained that our direct-appeal jurisdiction "is a limited one,"19 that we have been "strict in applying" or have "strictly applied" direct-appeal jurisdictional requirements,20 and that "[w]e have strictly construed our direct appeal jurisdiction."21 Therefore, we have held that to meet the jurisdictionalprerequisites, a trial court must actually "pass upon the constitutionality of [a] statute,"22 "determin[e]" a statute's constitutionality,23 or "base its decision" on constitutional grounds.24 Indeed, "[i]t is not enough that a question of the constitutionality of a statute may have been raised in order for our direct appeal jurisdiction to attach in injunction cases; in addition the trial court must have made a holding on the question based on the grounds of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of the statute."25
A close examination of the eleven cases where we dismissed for want of jurisdiction reveals strict adherence to the Legislature's restricted framework. For example, we held "no jurisdiction" where the trial court made the injunction decision based on res judicata26 or where the trial court was directed to do so by a writ of prohibition by the court of civil appeals.27 That is, because the trial court did not decide the merits of the constitutional issue, we lacked direct-appeal jurisdiction.28 Similarly, we held that we did not have such jurisdiction where the trial court denied an injunction because the plaintiffs lacked "the necessary justiciable interest" to sue.29 We even held that we lacked jurisdiction over a direct appeal of a temporary injunction involving a "serious question" ofthe constitutionality of a statute, because the real purpose of the temporary injunction was merely to...
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