ATLANTA (ABP) — Georgia's highest court heard arguments Feb. 14 in a case that may decide the future of Shorter College.
Trustees of the Rome school removed themselves from the Georgia Baptist Convention's control in 2002, arguing that convention officials were exerting undue political pressure on the selection process for future trustees. Attorney Bruce Brown, arguing for the college, told the Georgia Supreme Court that the convention, “by refusing to cooperate with Shorter, forced Shorter's hand.”
Brown said trustees were worried the school could lose its accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools unless the convention was removed from governance of the college. “The purpose was not to oust the GBC. The purpose was to get accredited,” he argued, according to news reports. “Ousting the GBC was a byproduct of the dissolution.”
But an attorney for the convention said the school violated Georgia law by dissolving itself and then reconstituting immediately. “One of the fundamental principles of Georgia law is that you can't do one thing and call it another,” Walter Bush told the court's seven justices, according to the Rome News-Tribune. “You can't do indirectly what the law won't allow you to do directly.”
The main issue before the justices in the case is whether a lower court, which decided against the school, improperly applied laws regarding for-profit corporations to the non-profit school. The school's trustees, in order to remove themselves from the control of the convention, voted to dissolve the school and transfer its approximately $50 million in assets to a foundation, which they then re-named “Shorter College.”
The move means that the Georgia Baptist Convention, which has been affiliated with the school since 1959, would no longer have the right to elect Shorter's trustees. Shorter was established in 1873.
Georgia Supreme Court observers expect the justices to hand down a decision in the case by mid-summer.