Gaddy v. Corporation of the President RICO Case petition for the U.S. Supreme Court

[Pyreaux]

Gaddy v. Corporation of the President RICO Case reached a major milestone, February 28, 2026, with a petition for the U.S. Supreme Court to take it up.

A Deception Argument

The core of the plaintiffs' argument is that the Church didn't just "teach religion"; they concealed physical evidence. They argue the Church taught that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon using "Urim and Thummim" while hiding the "Seer Stone" (a rock in the hat) in a vault for 100 years. Yet there are primary sources available with those accounts, with other differing accounts that are overlapping and messy.

The RICO angle is that by using the mail and internet (wire fraud) to spread these "false" historical narratives was done to collect their tithing, the plaintiffs claim the Church operates as a corrupt enterprise.

It's dumb. As the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August 2025, courts cannot be Inquisitors. If a judge starts deciding which parts of a miracle are true and which are fraud, the First Amendment effectively dies. The law treats religion as subjective; you can't sue a church for the fraud over the First Vision, and you can't sue a psychic for a bad reading.

The Tithing Fraud Theory

The second half of the case is about City Creek Mall and Beneficial Life. The Plaintiffs say President Gordon B. Hinckley lied when he said "not one penny" of tithing went to the mall. In the related Huntsman case (January 2025), the 9th Circuit ruled that the Church didn't lie. They used earnings from invested tithing (interest), not the principal tithing.

To a layperson, this may sound like a distinction without a difference, but in accounting, it’s a massive legal difference. The court found that because the Church had commercial earnings to cover the mall, no fraud occurred.

To win a RICO or fraud case, you have to prove Proximate Cause, that the lie directly caused you to spend money you wouldn't have otherwise spent. The plaintiffs argue they paid tithing because they didn't know a "rock in the hat" account existed.

Judges have struggled with many of these odd Ex-LDS claims. If you are a devout member for 40 years, did you really pay 10% of your income only because of the specific translation method? Or did you pay because you enjoyed the community, and believed in the faith and the overall theology? The plaintiffs claim existential crisis, depression, and financial loss. But they've received 40 years of free religious services, weddings, funerals, community in exchange, making it impossible to calculate "damages".

The case is now at the Supreme Court’s doorstep.

Attorney Kay Burningham is asking SCOTUS to decide if "empirically verifiable historical facts" (like the existence of a seer stone) can be separated from "religious belief." If they allow this case to move forward, every religion in America (Scientology, Catholicism, Islam) could be sued by former members for "historical inaccuracies" in their promotional materials.

The term "Urim and Thummim" was a catch-all phrase

Initially, Urim and Thummim was what Joseph referred to the "Interpreters" found with the plates. Under the influence of associates like W.W. Phelps, the term "Urim and Thummim" was adopted to describe any physical instrument used in revelation. So, to many early members, a seer stone was an Urim and Thummim. When Joseph or Oliver or the later Church says "Urim and Thummim," they could have been referring to the brown stone, or the white stone.

The "Hybrid" Translation Model

Most historians (Don Bradley and increasingly the Church itself) now point to a timeline where both were used, which complicates the idea of a "lie". Witnesses like Emma Smith and Martin Harris suggest the "Interpreters" were used primarily for the first 116 pages. After the 116 pages were lost, many accounts or David Whitmer and Emma Smith state that the Interpreters were taken back by the angel and that Joseph finished the rest of the translation using his brown seer stone. Other accounts say there was breastplate at one early point, and others say at another later point there was no stone or hat.

This is where the RICO case falls apart on merit. If you put the witnesses in a room, they don't all agree or align with a Seer Stone only theory.  If the witnesses themselves (who were in the room) couldn't agree on which stone was used and when, it’s legally impossible to prove the Church "knew" one was a lie and the other was the truth.

Because the translation is claimed to be a miracle, it falls under the "Religious Autonomy Doctrine." Courts cannot rule on how a miracle happened. If the Church says in its very scripture, the doctrine, nothing but "he translated by the power of God," they are protected; whether he used a hat or a rock or not is considered a matter of faith. The church taught what we knew based on the accounts we prioritized, like Oliver Cowdery. As more records like David Whitmer were studied, our understanding evolved. In a fraud case, evolving understanding is not the same as "intent to defraud."

The RICO case assumes there’s a 'secret truth' the Church hid, but the historical record remains messy. Joseph Smith used multiple stones, called them by different names, and his scribes all remembered the process just a little differently, and all can be "true".

https://becketfund.org/case/gaddy-v-corporation-of-the-president-of-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints/

Edited March 2 by Pyreaux

[Calm]

20 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

Gaddy v. Corporation of the President RICO Case reached a major milestone, February 28, 2026, with a petition for the U.S. Supreme Court to take it up.

They have requested to be heard, the Court has not said it would take the case, correct?

[Calm]

https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2020/11/24/how-the-supreme-court-decides-which-cases-to-hear

Quote

Most cases don’t make it all the way to the Supreme Court. Every year from 2012 to 2019, the court received an average of 7,000 to 8,000 petitions for a hearing. Each year, the court has agreed to hear only about 80 of those cases.

So 1%.

I find it highly unlikely this will be one of them.

Edited March 2 by Calm

[Pyreaux]

10 minutes ago, Calm said:

They have requested to be heard, the Court has not said it would take the case, correct?

Correct. Laura Gaddy filed their Petition for a Writ of Certiorari but the Court has not issued an order granting cert (choosing to hear it). Now that the petition is filed, the Church has about 30 days to file a Brief in Opposition, explaining why the Supreme Court should ignore the case.

This is however hot news to Ex-Mormons and the Mormon Stories Podcast, if the Ex-Mormons want to throw their money away (again?) just to start a conversation about this, I'm game.

Edited March 2 by Pyreaux

[Calm]

4 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

This is however hot news to Ex-Mormons and the Mormon Stories Podcast

Must be a slow news week then. (They announced back in October they would appeal to the SC.)

Edited March 2 by Calm

[Pyreaux]

5 minutes ago, Calm said:

Must be a slow news week then. (They announced back in October they would appeal to the SC.)

and filed an extension, it was granted, and just made their deadline yesterday.

[The Nehor]

I don’t even think this Supreme Court is dumb enough to take this up.

[Calm]

7 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I don’t even think this Supreme Court is dumb enough to take this up.

Why would they want to?  The current makeup leans conservative and that usually means pro religion in this country…don’t see them wanting to open up what would be a nasty bag of beans for religious faith even if it made legal sense.

While I get some religious individuals believe there is solid, reliable, scientific or legal evidence for the resurrection of Christ and other miracles, I assume they have been educated enough in legal requirements for evidence that they know it’s lacking for any major faith at least (I don’t know all the variations of faith and what they see as evidence for that faith, so not going to claim such limits for all faiths).

Edited March 2 by Calm

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Why would they want to?  The current makeup leans conservative and that usually means pro religion in this country…don’t see them wanting to open up what would be a nasty bag of beans for religious faith even if it made legal sense.

While I get some religious individuals believe there is solid, reliable, scientific or legal evidence for the resurrection of Christ and other miracles, I assume they have been educated enough in legal requirements for evidence that they know it’s lacking for any major faith at least (I don’t know all the variations of faith and what they see as evidence for that faith, so not going to claim such limits for all faiths).

I would say it is pro-Christian and not pro-religion in general and Mormons are currently useful even if there is little love there so yeah, no real desire to open this up.

Also would open up a can of worms if other Christians thought they could get donations back if they find out the gospels are likely not written by the named authors or something along those lines.

[JAHS]

Appeals court questions timeliness of fraud class action over Mormon church tithes

(CN) — Members of a class action asked a three-judge panel on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday to reconsider the statute of limitations in a fraud case that accuses the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon church, of misrepresenting its use of church tithes.

The case stems from a dispute between mostly former members of the Mormon church who accuse the church leadership of creating a slush fund from charitable donations that the plaintiffs say were obscured through different accounts by its investment firm, Ensign Peak Advisors. The plaintiffs accuse the Mormon church of using tens of billions of dollars for noncharitable expenses, particularly in the development of City Creek Center, a shopping mall in Salt Lake City.

The plaintiffs claim the church made false statements that their tithes would not be used for these kinds of investments.

A federal judge dismissed the case in April last year for filing the class action past the three-year statute of limitations for fraud based on the widespread news reporting and public discussion of the Mormon church’s use of tithes. But the plaintiffs appealed that ruling, arguing they were unaware of these discussions.

Much of the argument on Tuesday centered on whether the plaintiffs should have known about the use of the funds and filed their claims sooner.

“Under the decision of the District Court, the timer on the statute of limitations was running, and my clients had no idea,” attorney Scott George, of Seeger Weiss, told the three-judge panel.

But the panel was skeptical of this claim.

“It’s not about whether they had an idea; it’s whether they could have or should have known,” U.S. Circuit Judge Nancy Moritz, a Barack Obama appointee, said in response. “When there’s significant media coverage nationwide, locally, that’s been sufficient, and that’s what there was here.”

The origin of the fraud claims goes back to a 2019 whistleblower who leaked extensive knowledge of the Mormon church’s financial practices around tithing. The whistleblower report precipitated an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as widespread media coverage from Utah and national news outlets between 2019 and 2023.

The SEC fined the church and Ensign Peak Advisors in 2023 for illegally hiding its funds. The church and Ensign agreed to pay a total of $5 million in fines.

In his order dismissing the case last year, U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby, also an Obama appointee, ruled the plaintiffs should have filed the class action no later than February of 2023. The plaintiffs filed the case in October of that year.

They were only made aware of the topic after a May 2023 “60 Minutes” report was published, they say in their complaint.

George argued his clients did not have a legal duty to follow the news because, unlike in other cases, his clients were ordinary donors.

But the panel pushed back on this. The news about the whistleblower and SEC investigation was huge in the Mormon community, Moritz said.

“Tithing is a big issue for them,” she said. “People heard these reports, and they talked about them. I guess I’m not hearing you respond to that particular significant aspect to that case.”

George argued that his clients are primarily former members of the church and are no longer active in the community and mostly reside outside of Utah.

“This is the rare case where there is a market test as to whether people who were interested in filing a timely lawsuit could do it, based on the whistleblower report and the coverage of it,” said Paul Clement, of Clement & Murphy, representing the Mormon church.

The panel also questioned Clement about whether or not a reasonable person would have known about the discussion of church tithes used in the development of the shopping center.

“Does it matter how sophisticated the plaintiff was or how well read they were or what publications they subscribed to?” Moritz asked. “You can’t really conclusively determine when they would have had this constructive knowledge, or do you need to look at their individual situation to know when they would have had constructive knowledge?”

Clement argued that the plaintiffs’ claim that they relied on knowledge within the Mormon community that tithes would not fund the shopping mall, while remaining unaware of the widely publicized SEC investigation until May 2023, did not hold water.

“That strikes me as implausible, to be candid,” he said.

It’s not clear in the plaintiffs’ complaint when they were first told the tithes would not be used for the project, which George admitted was a deficiency.

Clement also told the panel that the class action was only filed after the Ninth Circuit ruled in favor of a donor in a similar case in 2023.

In that case, James Huntsman, a prominent former member, also sued the church for fraud after it used tithes to help the Salt Lake City shopping mall. Huntsman sought the $5 million he donated to the church while he was still a member. However, an en banc panel ruled in favor of the church, finding that no juror could conclude it misrepresented the source of the funds used for that project.

Moritz was joined by U.S. Circuit Judges Harris Hartz, a George W. Bush appointee, and Gregory Phillips, another Obama appointee.