Scientology is still several days away from its deadline to make its first answer to the major new labor trafficking lawsuit that was filed against the church in April, but in a new court document, Scientology’s attorneys have revealed that they will be using their favorite strategy to try and derail the case. That is, “religious arbitration.”
According to a document filed by both sides in the case yesterday, Scientology will be filing a motion to compel arbitration and end this case before it really gets going, just as they have in each of the lawsuits filed by former Scientologists since 2013.
The labor trafficking lawsuit was filed April 28 by Valeska Paris, as well as two other Australian former members of Scientology’s Sea Org, Gawain and Laura Baxter. All three allege that they were subject to abuse as child members of the paramilitary organization, which requires billion-year contracts and around the clock labor for 365 days a year, and at pennies an hour.
Valeska also alleged that she had been sexually assaulted by some of her fellow Sea Org workers, and was then punished when she dared to speak up about it.
Because Valeska and the Baxters had served in the Sea Org in the 1990s and early 2000s, we wondered if Scientology would be able to find contracts that they had signed from that time period with arbitration clauses. And when Scientology asked for, and received, more time to answer the lawsuit (on July 12), we figured they were using the time to dive into their records looking for such contracts.
Now, apparently, Scientology believes it has found such contracts and will argue that Valeska and the Baxters are obliged by the contracts they signed to take any dispute to its internal brand of “religious arbitration,” and will ask Tampa federal Judge Thomas P. Barber to deny them right to trial.
That strategy has derailed three previous lawsuits filed by former Scientologists: The fraud lawsuit filed in 2013 by Luis and Rocio Garcia, the 2019 kidnapping and harassment lawsuit filed by Valerie Haney, and the 2019 harassment lawsuit filed by the Danny Masterson rape accusers.
In January, a California appeals court overturned the arbitration ruling in the lawsuit filed by the Masterson accusers on the basis that the harm they allege — a campaign of stalking by the church — occurred after they had left the church, so the contracts they signed as Scientologists no longer apply. So that lawsuit has been revived, but is currently on hold as Masterson’s criminal rape case is scheduled to go to trial on October 11.
Valerie Haney made numerous attempts to get her arbitration ruling overturned, to no avail. And now she’s facing the prospect of going through the difficult process of selecting arbitrators. She has proposed actress Elisabeth Moss as an arbitrator, and we’re waiting to hear how Scientology responds to her (we suspect they will simply tell Valerie that Moss is unavailable). Judge Gail Killefer has set a new court hearing of February 2, expecting the arbitration to be completed by then.
The 2013 Garcia example is especially important for the lawsuit filed by Valeska and the Baxters because it took place literally in the same Tampa courtroom. And that court, the federal district court in Tampa, not only upheld the ruling that derailed the Garcia’s lawsuit for arbitration, but it was also upheld by the Eleventh Circuit when the Garcias appealed.
Based on these previous cases, what we expect is that Scientology next week will file a motion claiming that Valeska and the Baxters signed service contracts as Scientologists which obliged them to take any dispute to its own brand of arbitration (and not the independent arbitration you may be familiar with). Scientology will argue that such contracts are still in force, even decades after the matter at dispute, and whether or not Valeska and the Baxters are Scientologists today.
In yesterday’s joint filing, Neil Glazer, attorney for Valeska and the Baxters, indicated that they had asked for arbitration “discovery” to occur before they would have to file an opposition to the motion. In other words, they want to depose Scientology officials and do other investigation to make sure Scientology really has the evidence it claims before answering the motion. But Scientology argues that it’s the other way around, and the plaintiffs must file their opposition before they get a shot at discovery. We’ll see what the judge says about that next week, apparently.
As we pointed out just yesterday in regards to Valerie Haney’s lawsuit, it’s very important to understand that Scientology’s “arbitration” is nothing like the kind of independent arbitration that you might have gone through if you ever had to settle a claim with a doctor or a roofer or an employer. In that sort of arbitration, a retired judge or other person is selected by both sides to be the arbitrator, and that person listens to evidence on both sides and renders a verdict from a neutral position. Handling things this way saves the court system a lot of time and money, and that’s why judges are so anxious to divert cases to arbitration in order to lighten their caseloads.
Scientology’s arbitration is completely different. First of all, founder L. Ron Hubbard never described rules for arbitration, and Scientology is built on the premise that everything must come from Hubbard, who is known as “Source.” So under Hubbard’s successor, David Miscavige, a jackleg set of procedures has been cobbled together from the rules for Scientology “committees of evidence,” which is something like a court martial. (Hubbard was a Navy man in WW2.) Adapting those “CommEv” rules, Scientology arbitration takes place with a panel of three arbitrators, who must all be members in good standing.
This has been one of the chief objections raised by former Scientologists suing the church. They know that simply by filing a lawsuit they will be declared “Suppressive Persons,” which is Scientology’s way of labeling someone an enemy of the church. There’s no way, these former members say, that a panel of three Scientologists in good standing would ever hear a case fairly that involves an “SP.”
But judges, and particularly in Tampa, have decided that the contracts not only oblige former Scientologists to submit to a process in a church they no longer belong to, but that Scientology gets to set all of the rules and procedures for it, and the court is powerless to interfere without trampling on Scientology’s “religious rights.”
Scientology is hoping it can pull this off again, and end the Paris-Baxter lawsuit before it starts. Next week, we’ll see what sort of evidence they claim to have to make that happen.
Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:
Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history
Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea
Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time
Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology
Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain
Here’s the link for today’s post at tonyortega.org
And whatever you do, subscribe to this Substack so you get our breaking stories and daily features right to your email inbox every morning…
Now available: Bonus for our supporters
Episode 2 of the Underground Bunker podcast has been sent out to paid subscribers, and it’s a doozy: Claire Headley talks to us about the way she called out Tom Cruise on Facebook recently, and describes her interactions with him in surprising new detail, as well as revelations about Tom that came directly from David Miscavige! Meanwhile, we’ve made episode 1 available to everyone, it’s Marc Headley on what it must be like for Miscavige living in Clearwater, Florida. It’s Marc at his most irrepressible! Go here to get the episodes!
It's just plain sickening.
The Clampire's reply is not a hail Mary pass. It is well grounded in precedent and law. There have been 'advances' in how some courts treat human trafficking and related torts, but the Florida Federal courts seem to be unable to exam the fairness of $cieno 'arbitration'. I smell another long appeal to a higher court that will require more appeals to higher courts.