Opinion ID: 1323498
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the act's excessive entanglement with religion

Text: Considerations of the excessive entanglement between church and state threatened by the Act's substantive requirements additionally compel us to conclude that plaintiffs may not constitutionally be denied an exemption under section 75.7(a)(1). Should plaintiffs or any other religious organization be subjected to the full panoply of strictures contemplated by the Act, we would be faced with precisely the sort of sustained and detailed administrative relationships for enforcement of statutory or administrative standards, Walz v. Tax Commission, supra, 397 U.S. at 675, 90 S.Ct. at 1414, that have been repeatedly condemned by the Supreme Court. See, e. g., NLRB v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 440 U.S. 490, 501, 99 S.Ct. 1313, 1319, 59 L.Ed.2d 533, 542 (1979); Committee for Public Education v. Nyquist, supra, 413 U.S. at 794-95, 93 S.Ct. at 2976-2977; Lemon v. Kurtzman, supra, 403 U.S. at 619-622, 91 S.Ct. at 2114-2115. A continuous state surveillance of the financial records of applicant organizations inheres in the Act's auditing requirements, discussed above, as well as in the requirement that applicants maintain fiscal records in accordance with Commission regulations and make such records available for inspection upon demand. G.S. 108-75.12. The potential result of such a course of state inspection and evaluation can be seen in section 75.18(4)-(6), wherein the Secretary is empowered to suspend or deny a license upon a finding that the applicant has or will apply an unreasonable percentage of the funds solicited to other than a charitable purpose, or that the contributions solicited are not applied to the purposes as represented in the license application, or that expenses of an organization fairly allocable to the costs of fund-raising have exceeded or will exceed 35 percent of the total funds solicited. As applied to religious organizations, the enforcement of these provisions inevitably entangles the state and its agencies in a persistent inquiry into whether particular expenditures of a religious organization are secular or religious in nature, or whether the religious expenditures support the same religious purposes represented in the organization's license application. In Lemon v. Kurtzman, supra, 403 U.S. 602, 91 S.Ct. 2105, the Supreme Court struck down certain government subsidies to church-related schools on the grounds that an excessive monitoring of the schools' affairs would be required to guarantee that the grants would be used solely for secular purposes. Certainly no less of an entanglement defect is latent in a statutory scheme requiring the state to ensure, through a comprehensive, discriminating, and continuing state surveillance, id. at 619, 91 S.Ct. at 2114 that a reasonable quantum of a religious organization's expenditures are devoted to religious purposes. See, e. g., Fernandes v. Limmer, 465 F.Supp. 493, 504-05 (N.D.Tex.1979); see also Surinach v. Pesquera de Busquets, 604 F.2d 73, 76-78 (1st Cir. 1979). Moreover, the scope of entanglement posed here goes far beyond the state's policing a religious organization's administrative records. The potential exists for the state not only to substitute its own judgment as to the substantive purpose of a particular expenditure, but also to inject itself into the very center of religious disputes. [6] Absent narrow circumstances of outright fraud or collusion or other specific illegality, the propriety of a religious organization's expenditures can be evaluated only by reference to the organization's own doctrinal goals and procedures. The question of proper purpose is an ecclesiastical one, and its resolution necessarily entails an interpretative inquiry into possible deviations from religious policy. But this is exactly the inquiry that the First Amendment prohibits . . . . Serbian Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich, 426 U.S. 696, 713, 96 S.Ct. 2372, 2382, 49 L.Ed.2d 151 (1976). See also Presbyterian Church in the United States v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Presbyterian Church, 393 U.S 440, 89 S.Ct. 601, 21 L.Ed.2d 658 (1969); Atkins v. Walker, 284 N.C. 306, 200 S.E.2d 641 (1973); Trustees v. Seaford, 16 N.C. (1 Dev. Eq.) 453 (1830). Constant state evaluation of the religious purpose of an organization's expenditures is no less than constant state evaluation of the religious content of the organization's activities. The result is a relationship pregnant with dangers of excessive government direction. Lemon v. Kurtzman, supra, 403 U.S. at 620, 91 S.Ct. at 2115. We do not intend to intimate that the state will inevitably seek to apply the Act's provisions to religious organizations in such a way as to dictate the bounds of religious purpose. But the potential for such abuse is clear when the factors discussed above are considered cumulatively. We find that the Act, as applied to plaintiff religious organizations, is characterized by excessive entanglements between the state and religion and poses significant risks of secular interference with the rights of conscience. For all the foregoing reasons, we hold that plaintiffs may not constitutionally be denied an exemption from the Act. The Court of Appeals' decision that the qualification to the exemption in section 75.7(a)(1) of the Act defects an unconstitutional establishment of religion is AFFIRMED.