{"id":1714,"date":"2009-10-05T17:22:50","date_gmt":"2009-10-05T17:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/10\/supreme-court-rejects-conn-abu.php"},"modified":"2009-10-05T17:22:50","modified_gmt":"2009-10-05T17:22:50","slug":"supreme-court-rejects-conn-abu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/supreme-court-rejects-conn-abu","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court Rejects Conn. Abuse Case, Calif. Property Fight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) The Supreme Court announced Monday (Oct. 5) that it will not intervene in two prominent church-state cases, one involving a Catholic diocese in Connecticut and the other a former Episcopal parish in California.<br \/>\nThe Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn. has fought since 2002 to block the release of more than 12,000 pages of depositions and court records related to sexually abusive clergy. Four newspapers sued for access to the documents, which Connecticut courts have agreed should be open to the public.<br \/>\nThe diocese had specifically petitioned Justice Antonin Scalia, a Catholic, to keep the documents closed until the high court had heard its appeal on the constitutionality of the release order. That appeal is still pending, but legal analysts say it now appears unlikely that the Supreme Court will take it up.<br \/>\nThe diocese said the court order poses a risk to all churches&#8217; First Amendment rights and that &#8220;the content of the sealed documents soon to be released has already been extensively reported on.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops backed the Bridgeport diocese, saying that &#8220;we must remain vigilant against the risk that court-enforced avenues for the legitimate disclosure of documents are not abused&#8230;&#8221;<br \/>\nThe Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, however, said the &#8220;records will help parishioners and the public learn who helped to conceal clergy sex crimes, and which of those wrongdoers are still in positions of power.&#8221;<br \/>\nSeparately, the Supreme Court also declined to hear an appeal from St. James Anglican Church, which split from the Episcopal Church in 2004 after an openly gay man was elected bishop of New Hampshire.<br \/>\nThe Episcopal Church argues that local churches may leave, but under denominational laws they may not take church property with them. Last January, California&#8217;s Supreme Court ruled that St. James is bound by those church laws.<br \/>\nRepresentatives for St. James said they will continue their legal fight in the California courts. Similar proceedings between conservative dissidents and the Episcopal Church are ongoing in several more states.<br \/>\n<em>By Daniel Burke<br \/>\nCopyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) The Supreme Court announced Monday (Oct. 5) that it will not intervene in two prominent church-state cases, one involving a Catholic diocese in Connecticut and the other a former Episcopal parish in California. The Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn. has fought since 2002 to block the release of more than 12,000 pages of depositions&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Supreme Court Rejects Conn. Abuse Case, Calif. Property Fight<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/supreme-court-rejects-conn-abu\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Supreme Court Rejects Conn. Abuse Case, Calif. Property Fight\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WASHINGTON (RNS) The Supreme Court announced Monday (Oct. 5) that it will not intervene in two prominent church-state cases, one involving a Catholic diocese in Connecticut and the other a former Episcopal parish in California. The Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn. has fought since 2002 to block the release of more than 12,000 pages of depositions&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/supreme-court-rejects-conn-abu\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-10-05T17:22:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"mconsoli\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Supreme Court Rejects Conn. Abuse Case, Calif. Property Fight","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/supreme-court-rejects-conn-abu","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Supreme Court Rejects Conn. Abuse Case, Calif. Property Fight","og_description":"WASHINGTON (RNS) The Supreme Court announced Monday (Oct. 5) that it will not intervene in two prominent church-state cases, one involving a Catholic diocese in Connecticut and the other a former Episcopal parish in California. The Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn. has fought since 2002 to block the release of more than 12,000 pages of depositions&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/supreme-court-rejects-conn-abu","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-10-05T17:22:50+00:00","author":"mconsoli","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/supreme-court-rejects-conn-abu","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/supreme-court-rejects-conn-abu","name":"Supreme Court Rejects Conn. Abuse Case, Calif. 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