The Alabama Supreme Court on Friday denied a request for a re-hearing of its ruling against United Methodist churches that sued trying to leave the United Methodist Church and take their property.

The state Supreme Court, in a ruling released May 31, said the churches must pursue the matter through the denomination’s own judicial system.

Plaintiffs requested a re-hearing, which was denied.

The United Methodist Judicial Court is in the process of hearing points of church law raised by churches that have so far been denied disaffiliation, which would allow them to negotiate to leave the denomination and take their property with them.

The judicial court of the United Methodist Church will take up the issue of clarifying how Alabama churches that want to leave may still be allowed to depart the denomination.

More than 40 churches have been involved in lawsuits against the Alabama-West Florida Conference as they were denied in their attempts to leave the denomination and take their property with them. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that those churches would have to take their case to the church’s court, not state courts.

Guy’s Chapel, a 114-year-old church in Bay Minette, last month sued the Alabama-West Florida Conference in an effort to leave.

United Methodists had been in a decades-long decline losing several million members from the 1968 through the 2020 pandemic before debates over whether to embrace LGBTQ rights finally split the church in 2022-23.

The United Methodist General Conference earlier this year voted to fully embrace same-sex marriage and ordination of LGBTQ clergy, reversing longstanding policy. A breakaway group, the Global Methodist Church, will maintain those prohibitions.

Statewide in Alabama, more than half of United Methodist congregations disaffiliated – about 555 churches. Most of those departures have taken place since 2022. Nationwide, 7,600 churches, about a quarter of the denomination, left.