Green v. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

59 A.3d 1001, 430 Md. 119
CourtCourt of Appeals of Maryland
DecidedJanuary 28, 2013
DocketNo. 35
StatusPublished
Cited by18 cases

This text of 59 A.3d 1001 (Green v. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Maryland primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Green v. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 59 A.3d 1001, 430 Md. 119 (Md. 2013).

Opinion

BARBERA, J.

Maryland’s Property Tax Code provides that a “religious group or organization is not subject to property tax if the property is actually used exclusively for,” inter alia, “a parsonage or convent.” Md.Code (2001, 2012 Repl.VoL), § 7-204 of the Tax-Property Article.1 We are asked in the present [124]*124case to interpret and apply to conceded facts the terms “parsonage” and “convent” as they are employed in § 7-204.

The case has its genesis in the request of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints2 (“the Church”) that it be exempt from paying property tax on an apartment complex in Montgomery County, Maryland. The Church owns and uses the complex to house a revolving group of workers who perform religious ceremonies full-time for a two-year period at the Church’s Washington, D.C. Temple. The Church seeks to reacquire a property tax exemption that once was granted to the complex but later was rescinded following a periodic review by the Supervisor of Assessments of Montgomery County. The Supervisor of Assessments has taken the position that the apartment complex does not qualify for a property tax exemption under § 7-204 because the complex is not exclusively used as a parsonage or a convent.3 The Maryland Tax Court agreed with the Supervisor of Assessments, but the Circuit Court for Montgomery County reversed, holding that the complex should be granted the exemption because it qualified as both a parsonage and a convent. For the reasons that follow, we hold that the Tax Court applied the wrong standard in assessing whether the apartment complex constitutes a convent, so we remand the case for the Tax Court to issue an order granting the exemption consistent with the standards we set forth in this opinion. In light of our disposi[125]*125tion of the case, we do not opine on whether the apartment complex also constitutes a parsonage.

I.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the Mormon Church, was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith. In the years since its founding, the Church has grown to a worldwide membership of roughly 14.4 million people. At a local level, church members are divided geographically into wards, which are comparable to parishes or congregations in other faiths. Each ward is supervised by a bishop, who conducts weekly services for members of the ward at a local chapel. Each ward is part of a larger grouping, called a stake, and each stake is comprised of about ten wards. The stakes, in turn, are a part of a temple district, overseen by a temple president. The Washington, D.C. Temple District is made up of 42 stakes, divided into 425 wards, and covers Maryland, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, and parts of Ohio, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York.

The Temple is considered to be a sacred site and only members of the Church who are in good standing may visit it. This permission to enter the Temple is referred to as a temple recommend, and it is granted for a limited time to members who strictly follow the Church’s teachings. Within the Temple, special religious sacraments, referred to as ordinances, are performed. These ordinances may take place only within the Temple, and they may be performed only by specific Church members, who are called ordinance workers. The ordinances include marriages, baptisms, and confirmations.

The Church is run by lay ministers, rather than paid clergy. Bishops, stake presidents, and ordinance workers are all called into service by the Church and perform their duties without compensation. Ordinance workers generally serve for a period of two years and rotate through different assignments at the Temple. They spend most of their time performing ordinances, but they also teach, instruct, minister, and counsel members of the Church within the Temple. A strict religious [126]*126code is demanded of ordinance workers, and, if they do not follow it, they can be dismissed from service. Approximately 400,000 ordinances are performed in the Washington, D.C. Temple in an average year, or roughly 1,600 per day.

The D.C. Temple opened in Kensington, Maryland in 1974. The Temple is generally open 14 hours a day, five days of the week, serving the roughly 145,000 members who live within the D.C. Temple District. The ordinance workers who serve at the Temple mostly come from outside the D.C. area. In order to accommodate ordinance workers from out-of-town, the Church purchased a 44-unit apartment complex for them to live in, located in Kensington about a mile from the Temple. Between 50 to 60 ordinance workers live in the complex, the majority of whom are retired, married couples. The ordinance workers worship together as a ward each Sunday at a chapel located on the Temple grounds. The Church charges the ordinance workers below-market-value rent as a means of off-setting the operating expenses of the complex.

The 1980 property tax exemption

The Church sought a property tax exemption for the apartment complex in 1979 and was turned down by the Supervisor of Assessments of Montgomery County. The Church sought the exemption pursuant to Article 81, Section 9(c), the then-applicable provision of the Maryland Code that permitted an exemption for properties that were used exclusively for religious purposes.4 The decision of the Supervisor of Assessments was overturned on April 30, 1980, by a majority vote of the Property Tax Assessment Appeals Board for Montgomery County.

The appeals board stated that it was “persuaded that the apartments are used exclusively to house volunteers who are [127]*127brought to this area to work exclusively at the Temple, and that the apartments are used to foster this religious purpose.” The board noted that the rents charged to the ordinance workers were “so low as to be considered at least a partial subsidy of their housing” and this subsidy was in line with the subsidized housing found in parsonages and convents. The board found the language of the statute to be “somewhat ambiguous” but determined that the purpose of the exemption was to benefit the “residences of persons directly and exclusively involved [in] and dedicated to the perpetuation of public religious worship.”

The Church received the exemption until 2008, when the Supervisor of Assessments of Montgomery County did a periodic review of exempt properties in the county. Upon review, it was determined that the apartment complex should not receive a tax exemption.5 The Church received a letter on June 20, 2008, informing it of the decision, but without any explanation for why the exemption was being withdrawn, aside from the assertion that there were “no legal grounds” to support the exemption. The General Assembly had revised the language of the exemption when it created the Tax-Property Article in 1985, but the provision has continued to allow for a tax exemption for a parsonage or convent.6

[128]*128 The current tax exemption dispute

The Church appealed the decision to the Property Tax Assessment Appeals Board for Montgomery County, which affirmed the decision of the Supervisor of Assessments, again without explanation. The Church appealed the decision of the board to the Maryland Tax Court, which held a hearing on the matter on June 3, 2009.

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Bluebook (online)
59 A.3d 1001, 430 Md. 119, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/green-v-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints-md-2013.