## Facts

- Massachusetts law authorized ministerial taxes to support public Protestant worship through towns, parishes, precincts, and incorporated religious societies.
- Thomas Barnes served as a Universalist minister to a group in Falmouth that was not incorporated under state law.
- Two parish inhabitants who attended Barnes’s ministry paid ministerial taxes assessed by the established Congregational parish for years 1798–1805.
- Barnes demanded those tax payments from the parish, asserting he was the chosen “public Protestant teacher” for those taxpayers and entitled to the funds.
- Barnes sued in assumpsit to recover the taxes paid to the parish officers.
- At trial, the judge excluded Barnes’s offered testimony to prove his status as teacher of the Universalist group and instructed that Barnes could not recover because the group was not an incorporated religious society; the jury found for the parish.
- Barnes appealed on exceptions, arguing incorporation was not required and that any such requirement conflicted with constitutional protections of religious liberty.

## Issues

1. Whether a minister may recover ministerial taxes paid by his hearers to an established parish when the hearers’ dissenting religious group is not incorporated as a religious society.
2. Whether limiting tax redirection to incorporated societies is consistent with the Massachusetts constitutional and statutory scheme governing public support for Protestant worship.

## Decision

- The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts affirmed the judgment for the First Parish.
- The court held that eligibility to receive redirected ministerial taxes depends on the existence of an incorporated religious society authorized to act as a legal recipient of such support.
- Because the Universalist group was not incorporated, Barnes had no legal right to claim or recover the taxes paid to the parish.
- The trial judge’s instruction barring recovery on this ground was upheld.

## Legal Principles

- A “public Protestant teacher” may claim ministerial taxes redirected from an established parish only if he is the teacher of an incorporated religious society recognized by law.
- Rights connected to assessing, receiving, or diverting ministerial taxes attach to legally constituted public or corporate religious bodies (e.g., towns, parishes, precincts, or incorporated religious societies), not to unincorporated associations.
- Religious liberty protections secure freedom of worship and denominational choice but do not, by themselves, create an entitlement to public tax support absent compliance with statutory conditions for recognized societies.

## Conclusion

The court upheld Massachusetts’s statutory framework for public support of Protestant worship by ruling that a dissenting minister cannot recover parish taxes paid by his hearers unless the hearers belong to an incorporated religious society entitled to receive redirected tax funds.


Barnes v. First Parish in Falmouth, 6 Mass. 400 (Mass. 1810)