Research on legal implications of group shunning

by BreathoftheIndianNose 55 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  lisaBObeesa

  They have a right to decide who is in their community.

  Everyone agrees on that. That is not the question.

  The question is: does the WTBTS have the right to punish people who are no longer members?

  The strongest disciplinary process of the WTBTS is the DF/DA/Shunning (all the same one process: announcement+congregational shunning)

  the court saw continuing a disciplinary process on a non member to be a violation of their civil rights....

  http://church-discipline.blogspot.com/2007/02/mormon-alliance-home-page.html

  Excommunication of non members, Norman Hancock

  The case of Norman Hancock is an interesting one. It establishes firmly that churches cannot excommunicate members who leave during discipline, based on the Marian Guinn precedent. That once someone quits instantly their legal protections against libel and slander are restored. The state has no authority over the the disciplinary process within the church, but the person has no longer given their consent and this changes things.
  
  The case is standard. In 1985 the Mormon church excommunicated Norman Hancock after he submitted a letter of resignation to the church. Hancock filed an $18 million lawsuit against the church, saying a person has a right to voluntarily resign from a church. The suit was settled out of court. Church representatives agreed to change the records such that there would no longer be any record of an "excommuication": the records would show that he resigned, that is he had asked his name be removed from thechurch role.
  
  http://mormonalliance.org/casereports/volume3/part1/v3p1c05.htm

  The JWs try to, and do, get around this by saying DA is not DFing, and that there is no discipline for DA, just an announcement.

  But that is not the truth of what they are doing, it is simply a LIE to avoid lawsuits.

  Their discipline is shunning, and they require shunning of DA people and DF people.

  They are disciplining people who are no longer members and people who don't ever want to be members again. They do not have the right to do that.

  (if you read far enough on the "Church Discipline" blog you will see that even the author of that blog fell for the WTBTS lie that there is some difference between the way they discipline DF and DA people. He states that it is understood that JWs have no right to discipline those who no longer wish to be members.)
• 

  rebel8

  Michael Jackson, did filed a lawsuit against WT, that shunning was against human rights

  Huh? Do tell. Google does not know about MJ suing wts. Details, please.
• 

  frankiespeakin

  After I was disfellowshipped I was harassed by an elder that served on the special committee that handed down a favorable decision to support my initial disfellowshipping Judicial committee meeting.

  I went to a meeting a couple of weeks after my DF'n was announced in my home congregation, it was a different congregation but same building and the elders were watching me like I was Satan himself. I sister came up to ask me about the bible I was using and that elder(the one that served on the 2nd commitee) didn't let her get any more word out and came running over to tell her not to speak to me because I was disfellowshipped.

  The next meeting I went to in the Sunnyvale congregation a couple of weeks later I was arrest because they called the cops and said I was there to cause trouble(they came with about six or eight cops three cars I really don't know what line of bullshit they told the cops but they were ready for a real trouble maker), I was not really disurbing the meeting that much just making facial expression of contempt for the material persented from the platform but the bottom line was crossed when i raised my hand for answering a question put to the audience that was and that was when they all of a sudden got this big elder to come sit right next to me in a threatening way. I would call that true harassment.

  I probably got a case because I got word that they even announced my disfelloshipping 3000 mile away in some east coast crongregations I in the past belonged to. But I'm way too lazy to persue it.
• 

  Band on the Run

  When you do legal research, you can't just pull out stray cases. You have to read all lthe facts, consider the jurisdiction. What does the appellate precedent say?

  American courts are not going to stop shunning. I think it more likely that the religious groups will stop shunning before a U.S. court will.

  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I don't believe normal people know that the Witnessses shun. Why do people join a religion that overreaches so much? Does no one become suspicious when your Bible study never studies the Bible? How much sense does the two-witness rule make? How about the dragnets elders conduct to catch someone cheating? One could say that any relative that would shun you never loved you anyway.

  Oubliette made a point about the Civil War. Dred Scott is probably the most tortuous, poorly reasoned Supreme Court decision of all time. It was a procedural nightmare. Chief Justice Taney wrote stirring Supreme Court opinions. He had ample opportunity to not address the question of slavery. Abe Lincoln did not believe blacks were equals. His solution was to round up all the slaves and export them to Central or South America. Freed blacks refused to support his idea and all the Latin countries declared they would immediately start firing on slave ships. So the Emancipation Proclamation freed most slaves as an act of military necessity.

  Shunning appears to work. People get with the program. I get upset when normal people think Witnesses are only a joke about an interrupted pancake breakfast. Even the blood card business - it reveals so much about the Witness. Evidently, the elders hound you to make certain it is signed and in your wallet.

  The abolitionist turned to propaganda. Uncle Tom's Cabin was enormously successful. The law is not going to change. We need an Uncle Tom's Cabin. a Frederick Douglass.
• 

  JWdaughter

  I like what you had to say, BOTR. Good idea and one worth pursuing in a rational, measured way if we want to get the same positive results. No one needs to understand all the craziess of the WT (really, who does?) but to get the world riled up about something that makes it incumbent upon the WT to stop being abusive. . . would be amazing.
• 

  lisaBObeesa

  BOTR said:

  American courts are not going to stop shunning.

  Again, not the question. Everyone agrees American courts are not going to stop shunning by churches.

  The question is: does the WTBTS, or any other church, have the right to discipline people who are no longer members?

  1) I showed in a post earlier on this thread, The courts have found that continuing a disciplinary process on a non member to be a violation of their civil rights

  2) Letters drawn up by lawyers stating that a person has withdrawn membership (NOT DA!) and therefore is a non member and therefore cannot be disciplined (the announcement=discipline) without a suit being filed... have resulted in no announcement being made.

  I've posted in the other thread several examples of these letters posted here over the years that have worked to stop an announcement.

  Here is another:

  http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/184645/1/Lawyer-Letter-copy-to-Judicial-Committee#.UyYlTYU26M0

  I am very interested in anything you may know about the rights of churches to discipline non members, since that the arguement being made is that churches do not have a right to discipline non members. If this is wrong, I want to know it. I really do.

  frankiespeakin said:

  I probably got a case because I got word that they even announced my disfelloshipping 3000 mile away in some east coast crongregations I in the past belonged to. But I'm way too lazy to persue it.

  I don't know, frankiespeakin. It sounds like when they came for you, you didn't tell them you were a non member. Instead it sounds like you were a member, you participated in the JC, and were DF per the rules that apply to members. I'm not sure how much this 'non member' arguement applies to your situation... Still, you are now a "non-member" so you should not be subject to their discipline...trouble is, the genie is out of the bottle once the announcement is made... It's a whole 'nother can of worms to think about...
• 

  Band on the Run

  Excuse me. I see no claim of bar admission in any state. A single stray case is not a carefully researched legal memo. You are putting people at peril. I hope they realize that a consultation to a local lawyer is worth the investment. The op asked for resources for a subject that should be expanded. When I spent more than half a year researcing Establishment Clause violations, I saw that the discussion should include France, another European country, and Japan.

  A disfellowship announcement is not libel or slander. If anything, being disfellowshiped increases your reputation in your local community. Legal words have extremely precise definitions that often do not match the word in general English usage.

  It is my hope that the OP can research this matter in a neutral manner. Giving legal advice without being a member of the relevant bar is illegal. People love to read what they want to read. In any case, it is good to get feedback what is happening in a local area. NYC and rural areas often have different views on the application of a rule.

  Law is not justice. I have never met (if I have met on an Internet forum) people more determined to change what is unchangeable by law. If we could hire the equivalent of the group that is writing the content for JW.org, the general public would find JWs repulsive. When I tell people who think the Witnesses are an innocuous annoyance about shunning, the expression on their faces changes. Perhaps we should pay less attention to obscure doctrine and more attention to what most humans feel is flawed. Perhaps, in time, members of the judiciary, would stop viewing the Witnesses as a pancake disturber.
• 

  rebel8

  Hi lisa, I'd be interested in hearing more discussion about whether or not the discipline of non-members interferes with the non-member's rights.

  I think the church does not have the "right" per se to discipline non-members, but if it's not restricting someone else's rights, then what action could be expected on the part of the authorities?
• 

  MeanMrMustard

  lisaBObessa,

  When you say "the announcement=discipline" - how do you figure? If the annoucement is "So-and-so is no longer one of Jehovah's Witnesses", how does that amount to discipline? It would seem to me that the announcment itself can be viewed, from a legal perspective, as a membership maintenence issue. How would this be any different than there being a "membership list" hung on the announcment board for anyone to see?

  I took a look at the link you posted: http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/jw/friends/184645/1/Lawyer-Letter-copy-to-Judicial-Committee#.UyYlTYU26M0

  When the letter from the attorney said, "Any efforts to make a pronouncement or take action regarding Mr. Minette's status as a Christian, his moral character or any other statements which may possibly affect his relationship with others will be viewed as a violation of Mr. Minette's constitutional rights, in fact, violation of his First Amendment rights." How would this violate his first ammendment rights? The first ammendement to applies to congress, and federal, state or local government officials... so I am not sure what this means here.

  MMM
• 

  lisaBObeesa

  Hi lisa, I'd be interested in hearing more discussion about whether or not the discipline of non-members interferes with the non-member's rights.

  Rebel8, me too. However, I have to stop thinking about this topic for some time to focus on my midterms. I don't know any more about the topic, anyway.

  I think the church does not have the "right" per se to discipline non-members, but if it's not restricting someone else's rights, then what action could be expected on the part of the authorities?

  I don't really understand the question..

  One last bit of info dug up on the controversy...article has citations that might be informative for further research...so I'm saving it here...http://www.theopedia.com/Church_discipline

  The Oklahoma Supreme Court has further complicated this issue by holding in a 1989 case (Guinn v. Church of Christ of Collinsville) that a church may not carry out church discipline procedures regarding a former member who has withdrawn his/her membership. This case claims to conform to the U.S. Supreme Court holding in Paul v. Watchtower Bible & Tract Society (1987) which supported the Jehovah's Witnesses in their practice of "shunning" a former member that had withdrawn from membership in their religious community. There is disagreement within the legal community regarding whether or not the Oklahoma Guinn case violates the holding in the U.S. Supreme Court's Paul ruling.

  The law pertaining to church discipline, therefore, may be summed up under the headings of the "right of exit" and the "Power of the Gate." Any participant in a religious community has the "right of exit", meaning they may leave the religious community at any time of their choosing. On the other hand, the religious community holds the "Power of the Gate", meaning that it may refuse to allow a person from participating in its activities on the basis of its sincerely held religious beliefs. See The Law of Church and State in America by Rev. Dean M. Kelly, vol. 1, pp. 153-74 (available online at www.firstamendmentcenter.org).

  ...I'll be back to disturb more pancakes after midterms...