SALT LAKE CITY (Legal Newsline) – The woman who lost her faith in the Mormon church, then lost her lawsuit against it, is trying again.
Laura Gaddy amended her complaint against the Church of Jesus Christ of Ladder-day Saints, weeks after Utah federal judge Robert Shelby threw out her original complaint. He expressed skepticism that she will be able to correct her lawsuit, but in late May she tried anyway.
She alleges that the church leaves out pertinent information about its history and founder Joseph Smith and that key facts the church teaches are "radically different" than its factual history.
“Churches can be liable for fraud claims like anyone else,” Shelby wrote in March.
“But the First Amendment bars such claims when they would require a court to consider the truth or falsity of a church’s religious doctrines.”
Gaddy claims that the church, in its account of Smith's first vision, leaves out information found in Smith's own handwritten account, some of it relating to his practice of polygamy.
The Church of LDS argued in its original motion to dismiss that the case makes a “a mockery of both the court and religion.” It was quick to file another dismissal motion after Gaddy’s amended complaint.
“Ms. Gaddy once again attempts to use this Court as a forum for airing her religious grievances with the Church,” the motion says.
“The Amended Complaint is little more than a hodgepodge of criticisms of the Church and its teachings… She is, of course, entitled to her religious beliefs. But she is not entitled to use this Court to spread those beliefs or to force the Church to defend its religious teachings.”
Shelby also wrote that he “can no more determine whether Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ or translated with God’s help gold plates or ancient Egyptian documents, than it can opine on whether Jesus Christ walked on water or Muhammed communed with the archangel Gabriel. The First Amendment prohibits these kinds of inquiries in courts of law.”
From Legal Newsline: Reach editor John O’Brien at john.obrien@therecordinc.com.