Fiesty appeals judges take issue with James Huntsman's fraud lawsuit over Latter-day Saint tithing.
“It doesn’t matter that the concept of donation may be cloaked in religion,” his lawyer counters. “That’s not a way to get away from fraud.”Wednesday, pointing out multiple hurdles to legal examination of the prominent Utahn’s assertions that church leaders lied over spending on City Creek Center and misled him into donating., a former U.S. solicitor general, argued that top leaders of the Utah-based faith never misrepresented how they paid $1.
“How can you say that?” Smith demanded, before citing a list of contradictory rulings. “To my understanding, tithing — unlike your Mother Mary example — is a quintessential religious issue. In fact, I don’t know of any use of the term tithing that is not religious in context. What am I missing?” Appellate Judge Daniel Bress also abruptly paused Jonelis’ arguments at another point Wednesday, noting that faithful church members pay tithes as a required religious commandment. “How can a church have a secular definition of a religious obligation?” Bress asked. “I don’t understand how that could be.”
“Isn’t there a concern,” Sanchez probed, “if you’re asking courts to start parsing these speeches, whether it’s going to chill something within religious doctrine or internal church governance, that a church leader might have to run a speech by legal before he can deliver a sermon?” “What the record here reflects, in an irrefutable way,” said Clement, “is that the funds for this project that started out with $1.2 billion on January 1, 2004, then were segregated from all other funds.” That $1.2 billion, he added, came from “earnings on investment returns exclusively.”
Clement responded that the church took that approach in rebutting what it saw as empty claims because it “essentially wanted to clear its name.” “It’s simple math,” he said. “Let’s count up what’s in this pile. Let’s count up what in this pile — and let’s see if that’s consistent with what we submit was a secular statement by President Hinckley about what pile was used.”On top of these fractious issues, Huntsman’s case faces a new and last-minute dispute over whether the 9th Circuit, which encompasses California but not Utah, is the correct place for his appeal to be heard.
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