On June 9 the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal upheld a 2007 lower court decision which ruled against the congregation, which in 2006 had quit the Episcopal Church for the Church of Uganda.

"The long history of the Episcopal Church in La Crescenta will continue with new leadership and the potential for sustained growth, and as an open source of full inclusion for all humanity," Los Angeles Bishop Jon Bruno told the Episcopal News Service after the decision was released.

On June 11, the Rev Rob Holman, rector of the breakaway congregation, stated his congregation had “shed many tears at the thought of being deprived of our house of worship for these past 85 years.

“That the Bishop of Los Angeles would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in the courts to wrest all, down to even the small wooden processional cross from the hands of our youngest acolytes, is unfathomable to the Christian heart,” he said.

The appellate court’s action in the St Luke’s case will not affect any other California church lawsuit, however, as it was issued as an unreported decision --- meaning the court will not publish its ruling, preventing other courts or litigants from relying upon it for precedential value.

The court stated that it based its decision upon the Jan 5, 2009, decision by the California Supreme Court in the case of St James’ Newport Beach --- a case currently under appeal before the US Supreme Court and returned to the lower courts for trial in Orange County, California.

In its decision, the Court said the congregation’s reliance upon the 1981 Barker case that found in favor of breakaway Episcopal congregations on the theory of neutral principles of law, was ill-advised.

The Barker case was distinguishable “largely due to the passage of time” as it was decided before the creation of the current crop of canons that seek to vest trusteeship of parish property with the diocese and the national church and because the “appellate court in Barker did not mention any of the general church's canons. Accordingly, that decision does not control a dispute that, here, arose 25 years after the high court decision” and adoption of the new property canons.

Canonical expert AS Haley told The Church of England Newspaper that in the current legal climate “it's always dangerous, these days, to rely on what has gone before". The best strategy for a parish to follow nowadays is never to concede any facts, but to make [the Episcopal Church] prove every jot and tittle of its claims,” he observed.

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