The state of Connecticut gives special status to the canon law of the Episcopal Church, violating the First Amendment prohibition of government establishment of religion, according to a lawsuit filed by five rectors and the vestries for six parishes in the Diocese of Connecticut.

The plaintiffs filed suit Sept. 27 in the U.S. District Court for Connecticut against the Rt. Rev. Andrew D. Smith, Bishop of Connecticut, and the diocese charging fraud, trespass and breach of fiduciary duty. Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold and the Episcopal Church were also named in the 67-page complaint, charged with “aiding and abetting” Bishop Smith. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal was also joined as a defendant, as the “Connecticut Six” argued Connecticut law violated the U.S. Constitution.

The state had “entangled itself in every aspect of the temporal and certain aspects of the spiritual, operations of all the Episcopal parishes,” the complaint said, in violation of the Constitution’s first and 14th amendments. The federal civil lawsuit follows a canonical charge brought by the parishes against Bishop Smith Aug. 24.

The complaint charged the diocesan and national Church canons were “given a special legal effect by the State of Connecticut that is not given to the religious regulations and constitutional declarations of all religious corporations.”

Connecticut General Statute § 33-266 incorporates by reference “the constitution, canons and regulations” of the Episcopal Church into civil law, making enforcement of “Episcopal Church polity and morality” a “matter of state law,” the complaint said. “By their mere existence” these laws “permit and encourage Bishop Smith” and the co-defendants “to discriminate” against the parishes “on account of their religious beliefs.”

In addition to the claim for damages, the Connecticut Six asked the federal court to strike down the Connecticut law. The offending statutes promote religious sectarianism and “provide a scheme for the organization and governance of a particular religion through a web of sectarian canon law and secular statutory provisions, codifying the fundamental instruments and canons of” the Church.

They “have as their purpose” the “advancement of a particular religion through the provision of a particularized system of church governance and policy, peculiar to that one religion, enforceable in the civil courts”—an impermissible and unconstitutional role for the state in the life of the Episcopal Church, the complaint said.

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