Court says cremains buried next to former Episcopal Church can't be removed just because the church has been sold to a Coptic parish, which opposes cremation

The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today that cremated remains of former members of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Wayland can't be disinterred and moved elsewhere now that the building has become a Coptic Orthodox church - which does not believe in cremation and which wants the land for its own uses.

The appeals court concluded that when people purchased spaces for cremains burial they were promised "perpetual care" and that while the Copts have First Amendment rights, so do the families whose familial remains are buried there. The Episcopal diocese approved the sale of the church due to declining membership and the church struck a deal with a Coptic Orthodox congregation in Natick in 2015 - on the condition the cremains be moved.

In its ruling, the court said:

It is uncontested that the Coptic church has a sincerely held opposition to cremation on religious grounds. The next question, however, is whether judicial relief in favor of the families would substantially burden the Coptic church's exercise of its religious beliefs. When that church freely took title to the property, the cremated remains that the Coptic church now seeks to have removed already had been committed to the ground there. Under these circumstances, we fail to see how a judicial order preventing the Coptic church from removing those remains would constitute government interference with that church's free exercise of religion rights. And it bears noting that the unilateral disinterment of the remains potentially might implicate the families' own free exercise of religion rights.

Lawyers for the two churches also argued that whatever rights the families who objected to disinterment - many families gave their OK - were rooted in "common law" dating back centuries, but that such law became moot in 1815, when the state enacted legislation dealing with disinterment, and by an 1871 case in which Trinity Church sought to disinter bodies buried under its original building on Summer Street when it moved to its present location in what is now Copley Square.

The court, however, dismissed both arguments.

The 1815 law, it said, was intended to deal with what was then an epidemic of grave robbing to supply doctors with cadavers for medical training, while the 1871 case dealt with the public-health concerns of leaving bodies behind when the church moved. Neither applies in Wayland, the court said, adding that a case in which another church was allowed to disinter remains over the objections of family members also does not apply because the family members in that case were eight generations removed from the bodies and their burying ground had not been maintained, so nobody even knew where exactly the bodies were buried, "the cemetery was no longer recognizable as such; the grave sites could not be located and only shards of headstones could be found."

The court agreed there are extenuating circumstances that could allow disinterment, but that the sale of the church is not one of of them, it is "not some exogenous
development such as the opening of a sink hole" but rather a voluntary sale.

The court did not deal with the issue of what happens next:

We recognize that our reversal of the judgment leaves many issues unresolved, such as the parties' specific rights and obligations with respect to the maintenance of the remaining burial lots and the families' access to them.

The court said that because those issues did not really come up during the appeals process, it was leaving them to a Superior Court judge to figure out through more hearings and legal arguments.