The Church of Scientology has been involved in numerous court disputes across the world. In some cases, when the Church has initiated the dispute, questions have been raised as to its motives. The Church of Scientology says that its use of the legal system is necessary to protect its intellectual property and its right to freedom of religion. Critics say that most of the organization's legal claims are designed to harass those who criticize it and its manipulative business practices.
David Miscavige is the second and current leader of the Church of Scientology. His official title within the organization is Chairman of the Board of the Religious Technology Center (RTC), a corporation that controls the trademarks and copyrights of Dianetics and Scientology. He is also referred to within the Scientology organization as "DM", "C.O.B." or "Captain of the Sea Org".
Bare-faced Messiah: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard is a posthumous biography of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard by British journalist Russell Miller. First published in the United Kingdom on 26 October 1987, the book takes a critical perspective, challenging the Church of Scientology's account of Hubbard's life and work. It quotes extensively from official documents acquired using the Freedom of Information Act and from Hubbard's personal papers, which were obtained via a defector from Scientology. It was also published in Australia, Canada and the United States.
Fred T. Goldberg Jr. is an American tax lawyer who has served in high-ranking positions in the United States Government, including holding the position of Commissioner of Internal Revenue.
Gold Base is the de facto international headquarters of the Church of Scientology, located north of San Jacinto, California, United States, about 85 miles (137 km) from Los Angeles. The heavily guarded compound comprises about fifty buildings surrounded by high fences topped with blades and watched around the clock by security personnel, cameras and motion detectors. The property is bisected by a public road, which is closely monitored by Scientology with cameras recording passing traffic.
Diarmuid Fionntain O'Scannlain is a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. His chambers are located in Portland, Oregon.
Spokeo is a people search website that aggregates data from online and offline sources.
Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by the American pulp science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It is variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religious movement. Hubbard initially developed a set of ideas that he called Dianetics, which he represented as a form of therapy. An organization that he established in 1950 to promote it went bankrupt, and Hubbard lost the rights to his book Dianetics in 1952. He then recharacterized his ideas as a religion, likely for tax purposes, and renamed them Scientology. By 1954, he had regained the rights to Dianetics and founded the Church of Scientology, which remains the largest organization promoting Scientology. There are practitioners independent of the Church, in what is called the Free Zone. Estimates put the number of Scientologists at under 40,000 worldwide.
Kim McLane Wardlaw is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit since 1998. She is the first Hispanic American woman to be appointed to a federal appeals court. Wardlaw was considered as a possible candidate to be nominated by Barack Obama to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Kendrick Lichty Moxon is an American Scientology official and an attorney with the law firm Moxon & Kobrin. He practices in Los Angeles, California, and is a lead counsel for the Church of Scientology. Moxon received a B.A. from American University in 1972, and a J.D. degree from George Mason University in 1981. He was admitted to the Washington, D.C., bar association in 1984, and the State Bar of California in 1987. Moxon's early work for the Church of Scientology involved legal affairs, and he also held the title of "reverend". He worked out of the Scientology intelligence agency known as the Guardian's Office (GO), and was named as an unindicted co-conspirator after the Federal Bureau of Investigation's investigation into criminal activities by Scientology operatives called "Operation Snow White". An evidence stipulation in the case signed by both parties stated he had provided false handwriting samples to the FBI; Moxon has since said that he did not "knowingly supply" false handwriting samples.
The intersection of Scientology and abortion has a controversial history which began with Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard's discussion of abortion in his 1950 book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Hubbard wrote in Dianetics that abortion and attempts at abortion could cause trauma to the fetus and to the mother in both spiritual and physical ways. Scientologists came to believe that attempted abortions could cause traumatic experiences felt by the fetus, which would later be remembered as memories referred to in Scientology as "engrams". In the Scientology technique called Auditing, Scientologists are frequently queried regarding their sexual feelings and behaviors. These questions about Scientologists' sexual behavior are often posed to members during "security checks", a specific form of auditing sessions where individuals are required to document their divergence from the organization's ethics. One of the questions asked in these security checks is, "Have you ever been involved in an abortion?".
Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology is a memoir written by Marc Headley, a former Scientologist and Sea Org member, about his life and experiences in the Church of Scientology. It was self-published in the United States on November 5, 2009.
The ministerial exception, sometimes known as the "ecclesiastical exception," is a legal doctrine in the United States barring the application of anti-discrimination laws to religious institutions' employment relationships with its "ministers." As explained by the Supreme Court in the landmark case Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. E.E.O.C., the exception is drawn from the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and seeks to both (1) safeguard religious groups' "freedom. .. to select their own ministers," a principle rooted in the Free Exercise Clause, and (2) prevent "government involvement in [] ecclesiastical decisions," a prohibition stemming from the Establishment Clause. When applied, the exception operates to give religious institutions an affirmative defense when sued for discrimination by employees who qualify as "ministers;" for example, female priests cannot sue the Catholic church to force their hiring. However, exactly which types of employees should qualify as a "ministers," and thus how broadly the exception should apply, was the subject of recent litigation before the Supreme Court.
"The Hole" is the name of a detention building—also known as the SP Hole, the A to E Room, or the CMO Int trailers—operated by the Church of Scientology on Gold Base, its compound near the town of Hemet in Riverside County, California, United States. Dozens of its senior executives have been confined within the building for months or years. It consists of a set of double-wide trailers within a Scientology compound, joined together to form a suite of offices which were formerly used by the Church's international management team. According to former members of Scientology and media reports, from 2004, the Church's leader David Miscavige sent dozens of senior Scientology executives to the Hole. The Tampa Bay Times described it in a January 2013 article as:
a place of confinement and humiliation where Scientology's management culture—always demanding—grew extreme. Inside, a who's who of Scientology leadership went at each other with brutal tongue lashings, and even hands and fists. They intimidated each other into crawling on their knees and standing in trash cans and confessing to things they hadn't done. They lived in degrading conditions, eating and sleeping in cramped spaces designed for office use.
Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330 (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court vacated and remanded a ruling by United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on the basis that the Ninth Circuit had not properly determined whether the plaintiff has suffered an "injury-in-fact" when analyzing whether he had standing to bring his case in federal court. The Court did not discuss whether "the Ninth Circuit’s ultimate conclusion — that Robins adequately alleged an injury in fact — was correct."
The tax status of the Church of Scientology in the United States has been the subject of decades of controversy and litigation. Although the Church of Scientology was initially partially exempted by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from paying federal income tax, its two principal entities in the United States lost this exemption in 1957 and 1968. This action was taken because of concerns that church funds were being used for the private gain of its founder L. Ron Hubbard or due to an international psychiatric conspiracy against Scientology.
Danielle Jo Forrest, formerly known as Danielle Jo Hunsaker, is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Forrest was an Oregon state court judge for the Washington County Circuit Court from 2017 to 2019.
Kate S. O'Scannlain is an American attorney who served as the United States Solicitor of Labor in the Donald Trump Administration from 2017 to 2021. She was nominated on September 28, 2017, and officially confirmed by the United States Senate on December 21, 2017.
Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, 591 U.S. ___ (2020), was a United States Supreme Court case involving the ministerial exception of federal employment discrimination laws. The case extends from the Supreme Court's prior decision in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which created the ministerial exception based on the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses of the United States Constitution, asserting that federal discrimination laws cannot be applied to leaders of religious organizations. The case, along with the consolidated St. James School v. Biel, both arose from rulings in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that found that federal discrimination laws do apply to others within a religious organization that serve an important religious function but lack the title or training to be considered a religious leader under Hosanna-Tabor. The religious organization challenged that ruling on the basis of Hosanna-Tabor. The Supreme Court ruled in a 7–2 decision on July 8, 2020 that reversed the Ninth Circuit's ruling, affirming that the principles of Hosanna-Tabor, that a person can be serving an important religious function even if not holding the title or training of a religious leader, satisfied the ministerial exception in employment discrimination.
Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 597 U.S. ___ (2022), is a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held, 6–3, that the government, while following the Establishment Clause, may not suppress an individual from engaging in personal religious observance, as doing so would violate the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses of the First Amendment.
