BREAKING: Judge Barber grants Valeska Paris right to appeal to Eleventh Circuit

As if we didn’t have enough to report on today with the evidentiary hearing in the Scientology leak at the Danny Masterson case in Los Angeles, we also have another judicial ruling on the other end of the country.

This afternoon, Judge Thomas Barber granted Valeska Paris and Gawain and Laura Baxter the right to appeal his March 31 ruling forcing their trafficking lawsuit into Scientology’s “religious arbitration.”

Normally, Valeska and the Baxters would have to go through the arbitration process and then appeal the result, but Judge Barber has granted their request to appeal his ruling now to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals without first going through the arbitration process, which could take years.

Judge Barber ruled that attorneys for Valeska and the Baxters had identified two issues of “pure law” that the Eleventh Circuit could look at now that do not require a full-blown review of the record in the case. Those two questions are…

(1) whether Plaintiffs’ fraud in the execution and duress challenges to the arbitration agreements must be heard by a Scientology arbitrator, rather than the district court; and (2) whether forcing Plaintiffs to participate in a Scientology religious arbitration violates their First Amendment right to leave their religion.

Also, Barber again refers to what he said in his March 31 ruling: That he felt his hands were tied, and that there are issues here that need to be cleared up.

The Court emphasizes that it did not come to its decision to compel arbitration lightly or easily, and the controlling legal issues present difficult questions that have not been squarely addressed by the Eleventh Circuit or United States Supreme Court. There is certainly room for disagreement, even if the Court ultimately found Defendants to have the stronger position.

While this is a great result for Valeska and the Baxters, they will be going to an Eleventh Circuit that has already upheld Scientology’s arbitration scheme, in the Garcia case, which was filed in the same Tampa court.

But at least they have a sporting chance to avoid the same fate that has derailed other lawsuits filed by former Scientologists.

Here’s the ruling…

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