The Church of Scientology is no stranger to the American legal system. Its decades-long battle to obtain tax-exempt status is perhaps the most famous in the history of the IRS. The Justice Department indicted some of its top members in the 1970s for a wide-ranging plot to infiltrate the federal government. The church’s reputation for litigiousness is so strong that HBO hired at least 160 lawyers when it agreed to make a documentary on Scientology in 2014.
Last week, the church asked the Supreme Court to help move a dispute out of the legal system and into the church’s own. At issue is whether the Church of Scientology can compel ex-members who accused it of misconduct into a religious arbitration process that it supervises. A California appeals court said no earlier this year, concluding that such compulsion would violate the ex-members’ First Amendment rights. The church claimed that the ruling infringed upon the church’s ability to organize and discipline its congregants—a Gordian knot of religious freedom claims that the justices may soon decide whether to cut.
