Eleventh Circuit: Florida trafficking lawsuit will be forced into Scientology arbitration

Ten months ago, Tampa federal District Judge Thomas Barber granted three former Sea Org workers suing Scientology for labor trafficking the right to petition for an appeal of his decision to force their lawsuit into “religious arbitration.”

Judge Barber was clearly conflicted about his ruling, but said that Supreme Court rulings had tied his hands, and because Valeska Paris and Gawain and Laura Baxter had signed contracts with arbitration clauses while they were employed by the church, they had no choice but to submit to Scientology’s internal arbitration scheme.

Normally, they would then have to go through that arbitration before they could appeal Judge Barber’s ruling. But last June he granted them the right to petition the Eleventh Circuit for an interlocutory appeal.

Now, ten months later, the Eleventh Circuit — which had previously upheld a similar case from the same courtroom several years earlier — has denied their petition, and Valeska and the Baxters will have to submit to Judge Barber’s order.

The Eleventh Circuit gave no details about why it was denying the petition, except to note that the decision was 2-1, with Judge Robin S. Rosenbaum dissenting, the same Judge Rosenbaum who had also dissented on the Garcia ruling several years ago.

We know that some people who supported this lawsuit believed that the horrible nature of the allegations might save it from the same fate as the Garcia case. But that has not happened.

Yet another lawsuit by former Scientologists has been derailed by courts that somehow believe that a contract is a contract, even when it forces abused former workers like Valeska and the Baxters to go crawling back to their abusers in a kangaroo court with Scientologists in good standing as the arbitrating panel.

It’s a mockery of justice.

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