Church of Scientology Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Force Danny Masterson Rape Accusers into Binding ‘Religious Arbitration’
https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/church-of-scientology-asks-u-s-supreme-court-to-force-danny-masterson-rape-accusers-into-binding-religious-arbitration
The Church of Scientology is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case that questions whether religious groups can force their followers — and even their ex-followers — to submit to internal arbitration proceedings to settle disputes.
The case is connected to and indeed names Daniel Masterson, the “That 70s Show” actor who faces an upcoming rape trial in the California state court system. The respondents in the case allege that Masterson, who is described in Church legal filings as “another Church parishioner,” sexually assaulted them between 2000 and 2003. The instant case involves not the instances of alleged assault but rather whether church officials “improperly handled Respondents’ reporting of the alleged assaults.”
An intermediate California appellate court ruled on Jan. 19, 2022 that the respondents enjoyed a First Amendment right to leave the Church of Scientology and that their mandatory arbitration agreement with the church was terminated along with the respondents’ departure from the faith. That ruling flatly described the Masterson allegations as “rape”:
Petitioners in this writ proceeding are former members of the Church of Scientology who reported to the police that another Church member had raped them. They allege that, in retaliation for their reports, the Church encouraged its members to engage in a vicious campaign of harassment against them. After petitioners brought suit in superior court against the Church and related entities and persons, some of those defendants moved to compel arbitration, relying on agreements that provided all disputes with the Church would be resolved according to the Church’s own “Ethics, Justice and Binding Religious Arbitration system.” That system was created to decide matters “in accordance with Scientology principles of justice and fairness.”
One key point of the California Court of Appeal ruling was that petitioners’ case involved conduct that allegedly occurred after the petitioners left the church:
Individuals have a First Amendment right to leave a religion. We hold that once petitioners had terminated their affiliation with the Church, they were not bound to its dispute resolution procedures to resolve the claims at issue here, which are based on alleged tortious conduct occurring after their separation from the Church and do not implicate resolution of ecclesiastical issues. We issue a writ directing the trial court to vacate its order compelling arbitration and instead to deny the motion.
The Court of Appeal opinion is officially unpublished and therefore carries little to no weight as precedent under the California Rules of Court (Rule 8.1115, specifically).
The California Supreme Court refused to take the case, so the church appealed to a higher authority. The church’s U.S. Supreme Court petition asks the nation’s highest court to pluck the matter from the California court system and proffers these two issues as questions presented:
(1) Where a parishioner freely executes a religious arbitration agreement with her church, does the First Amendment prohibit enforcement of the agreement if the parishioner leaves the faith?
(2) Does the First Amendment restrict the terms on which a Church may accept members into its faith?
At times co-opting language from the Court of Appeal opinion, the church asserts in its petition to the U.S. Supreme Court that its followers consented to an “irrevocable agreement” to “submit disputes to Scientology arbitration” — which is just “one of the prices of joining [the Scientology] religion.”
The church’s practice of resolving disputes with members is described in the petition as “religious arbitration.” The petition chides California’s court system for — in Scientology’s view — forcing it to change the way it admits and deals with its own congregants. The church argues that the First Amendment bans the state and its courts from governing church dispute resolution procedures.
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