Last week, the California Court of Appeal (Bixler v. Superior Court) refused to apply a broad Scientology arbitration agreement to a lawsuit brought by ex-members who claimed they were mistreated in various ways after they 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….
I asked Prof. Michael Helfand (Pepperdine) about this, since I know he's written extensively on religious arbitration, and he kindly passed along this reaction, which strikes me as very interesting and useful:
