The U.S. Court of Appeals has put an end to the long-running case against the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has issued a final ruling in the lawsuit filed by former Archimandrite Alexander Beli against the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), dismissing his defamation claims. According to OrthoChristian, the court applied the doctrine of ecclesiastical autonomy, under which matters of internal governance, discipline, and the selection of clergy are the prerogative of religious organizations and are protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The legal proceedings began in 2020, when Alexander Belya accused the leadership of the ROCOR of slander. The conflict arose in 2019, when the Moscow Patriarchate announced Belya’s election as Bishop of Miami. The leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), which had not conducted such an election, alleged that documents had been forged, after which Belya was temporarily suspended from ministry pending an investigation. The plaintiff claimed that the allegations of document forgery were false and had damaged his reputation.

The court ruled that hearing the case would require secular justice to intervene in the protocols for the election of bishops and the church’s internal communications, which is impermissible. Judge Gerard Lynch emphasized that forcing the church to recognize or retain an undesirable clergyman, as well as interfering in disciplinary proceedings, constitutes a violation of a religious organization’s autonomy. Attorneys from the Becket Fund, representing the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR), called this decision an important victory for the protection of religious communities’ rights to self-governance.

It should be recalled that after a church investigation began in 2019, Alexander Belya left the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) without canonical leave and transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America). In February 2020, he was defrocked by a decision of the ROCOR. He currently heads the so-called “Slavic Vicariate” within the Greek Archdiocese, which consists primarily of clergy who have been defrocked or are under excommunication in other churches.