• An 11-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals recently unanimously dismissed a lawsuit by a former member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who disagreed with the way he felt the church had used his contributions.
• Six of the judges concluded that no reasonable jury could conclude that the church had engaged in fraud. The rest of the judges pointed out that the case involved a serious constitutional issue of courts trying to decide doctrinal disputes, an issue the U.S. Supreme Court is also considering.
• The U.S. Supreme Court can clarify that courts are not competent to evaluate religious teachings and thus provide an important protection for religious freedom.

​A unanimous decision by 11 judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit addresses a fundamental religious freedom issue that is also being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision dismissed a lawsuit brought by a former member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that was spurred by his disagreement with the church’s teachings. He argued that the church had used donations in ways he disapproved of and felt defrauded.

The case was decided en banc, which means that a larger-than-usual panel of judges heard the case. All 11 of the judges agreed the lawsuit should be dismissed.

Six of the judges issued a majority opinion, which concluded: “No reasonable juror could conclude that the Church misrepresented the source of funds for the City Creek project.” The opinion went on to say that its decision did not require it to delve “into matters of Church doctrine or policy.”

All the other judges agreed with this result, but five of them wrote separately to note another problem with the lawsuit. The first of these opinions, representing the opinion of four judges, was forceful:

This lawsuit is extraordinary and patently inappropriate, a not-so thinly concealed effort to challenge the Church’s belief system under the guise of litigation.  The majority is correct that there was no fraudulent misrepresentation even on the terms of plaintiff’s own allegations.  But it would have done well for the en banc court to recognize the obvious: there is no way in which the plaintiff here could prevail without running headlong into basic First Amendment prohibitions on courts resolving ecclesiastical disputes.

Relying on cases that protected the right of churches “‘to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine,” these judges argued that the case was a “transparent fight about the current course of the Church masquerading as a civil lawsuit” – a fight that the First Amendment forbids courts to take up. Considering questions like the meaning of tithing or having judges and juries examine sermons are the types of things the First Amendment is meant to protect religious organizations from by precluding “lawsuits such as this.”

Judge Patrick J. Bumatay would have gone even further. After a careful and thorough review of the text and history of the First Amendment Establishment Clause, he concluded that since “the church autonomy doctrine bars federal courts from resolving matters of faith, doctrine, and church governance … we can’t just sidestep the doctrine and jump straight to the merits” of the case.

Though this decision is important in itself, it points to a larger – in fact, foundational – question about religious freedom that the U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering in another case, Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin. This case is about whether the Catholic Charities Bureau is religious enough to qualify under a law that allows religious organizations to participate in their own unemployment assistance programs rather than the state’s.

The courts have long recognized that the First Amendment protections of religious freedom preclude them from deciding whether particular views of religious doctrine are correct. The Supreme Court, in a dispute about the beliefs of Jehovah’s Witnesses, has said courts are “singularly ill equipped” to resolve differences about religious teachings and that it is “not within the judicial function and judicial competence to inquire” which members of a faith “more correctly perceived the commands of their common faith. Courts are not arbiters of scriptural interpretation.”

Five of the judges in the tithing case highlighted this concern about the role of courts when a case turns on questions of religious doctrines. The Supreme Court is being asked to do the same thing. What do religious beliefs require of believers? Can the state really determine whether a charity’s motivation is sufficiently religious? Should churches or courts be able to determine whether assistance to the needy is a religious activity or secular?

The Supreme Court should clarify that government is not equipped to determine doctrinal disputes. One core concept of our constitutional order is the separation of powers, and we honor that principle by not allowing officials of one branch of government to take on the responsibilities of the other. Similarly, we should protect the principle of separation of church and state by allowing churches to determine their leaders and establish their doctrines without interference from government.