Scientology: Put Bixler case on hold while we hit up the US Supreme Court about ‘arbitration’
[Bobette Riales, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, and Chrissie Carnell-Bixler]
If you wondered how Scientology was going to deal with its stunning defeat in the Bixler lawsuit, it confirmed this week that it’s going to try a Hail Mary to the US Supreme Court.
In January, California’s 2nd Appellate Division delivered a shocking blow in the Bixler v. Scientology case, overturning a lower court ruling that had forced the case into Scientology’s own brand of “religious arbitration.”
The appeals court found that because the Bixler plaintiffs are alleging harassment and stalking that has occurred after they left the church, Scientology can’t force them to into arbitration based on contracts they signed while they were still members.
Chrissie Carnell-Bixler and her fellow plaintiffs — her husband, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, Bobette Riales, and two women going by Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 — are suing over the harassment they say they’ve experience since the women came forward to the LAPD in 2016 with allegations that they had been raped by Scientology celebrity Danny Masterson. The lawsuit is only about that campaign of harassment, and it was filed in August 2019.
Criminal charges against Masterson were filed in June 2020, and his trial is scheduled for October 11 in Los Angeles. He’s accused of forcibly raping three of the women suing him (Bixler and the two Jane Does), and if he’s convicted he faces 45 years to life in prison.
The Bixler plaintiffs had asked the civil court for a stay in proceedings until the criminal case was taken care of. Scientology opposed that motion for a stay, and they say they still oppose it on the grounds that the plaintiffs were asking for.
But Scientology, in a new filing, says that a stay should be put on the case because by July 19 the church plans to file a petition with the US Supreme Court to ask it to intervene and overturn the 2nd Appellate Division’s ruling on religious arbitration…
The Church Defendants respectfully request the Court deny Plaintiffs’ request to stay this litigation pending resolution of the Masterson criminal matter and instead continue the current stay of proceedings pending resolution of the Church Defendants’ petition for writ of certiorari and any subsequent proceedings in the United States Supreme Court.
What will Scientology say in its petition to SCOTUS? We assume it will look at least something like the petition it sent to California’s Supreme Court after the January ruling by the 2nd Appellate Division.
What most seemed to horrify Scientology was that the appeals court essentially ignored some of the arguments being made by Marci Hamilton, the attorney representing the Bixler plaintiffs, who had argued that the contracts should be null and void after the women had left the church. The appeals justices, however, said that it wasn’t that they’d left the church that mattered, but that the harm they said the church was causing them, the stalking, libel, and harassment, was happening after they had left the church.
That might sound perfectly logical to an outside observer, but Scientology was hopping mad that the justices had dared to consider the situation outside of what Hamilton had briefed or argued. What authority did these justices have to look at the case themselves and decide what made sense?
The state supreme court was not swayed by this reasoning, and denied the petition.
Scientology will now try to convince the US Supreme Court that “religious rights” are under attack here, and hope that its conservative majority bites on it. But the odds are against them. The court only accepts to hear about 3 percent of the petitions that are submitted.
As soon as we see the petition pop up on the Supreme Court docket, we’ll post it for you.
Okay, managed to find my way over here. Now just have to figure out how to do anything beyond type plain text.
Wow, ad-free?
Visually this is a vast improvement.