Court Opinion

ID: 9844170
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:58:29.205539+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:29.306483
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent from the Court’s opinion.
The Court wrestles mightly with the meaning of “parsonage.” In doing so, the Court invokes various dictionaries as well as statutes and decisions from other jurisdictions. I would merely apply a construction that acknowledges that both “parson” and “parsonage” are archaic terms from an earlier era. Both the legislature and this Court have more recently used the term “clergyman” to refer to the leader of a church or religious organization. E.g., I.C. § 30-324 (“If the management of a church is vested in its members pursuant to section 30-314, Idaho Code, the organization meeting shall be held by the members upon the call of the clergyman or lay leader calling the meeting ... ”); I.R.E. 505 (A “clergyman” is a “minister, priest, rabbi, accredited Christian Science Practitioner, or other similar functionary of a religious organization ... ”).
In these terms, “parsonage” is nothing more than a clergyman’s (or stated in gender-neutral terms clergy’s) house. The mighty struggle in which the Court engages would be easily resolved if this straightforward construction were given to the meaning of “parsonage” in I.C. § 63-105B. If so, the Court should have no problem in allowing the exemption for the residences in this case.