Whether the First Amendment empowers courts to override the chosen legal structure of a religious organization and declare all of its constituent parts a single legal entity subject to joint and several liability

QUESTION PRESENTED As this Court explained more than 150 years ago, “civil courts exercise no jurisdiction” over matters of “ecclesiastical government.” Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. 679, 733-34 (1871). Since then, the Court has repeatedly reaffirmed that, “as a part of the free exercise of religion against state interference,” civil courts cannot interfere with matters of internal church structure. Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral of Russian Orthodox Church in N. Am., 344 U.S. 94, 116 (1952). Despite an unbroken wall of precedent confirming that a “Church’s choice of its hierarchy” is “an ecclesiastical right” protected by the First Amendment and immune from second-guessing by civil courts, id. at 119, the Puerto Rico Supreme Court ignored well-established separations and distinctions between Catholic entities in Puerto Rico and collapsed the Archdiocese, five separate dioceses, and 338 distinct parishes into a single nonexistent entity, and then used that disregard of Church hierarchy to order the taking of assets from entities that are strangers to these proceedings. Incredibly, the Puerto Rico Supreme Court not only failed to defer to the Church’s understanding of its own hierarchy and doctrine, but held that doing so would violate the Establishment Clause. The question presented is: Whether the First Amendment empowers courts to override the chosen legal structure of a religious organization and declare all of its constituent parts a single legal entity subject to joint and several liability.