A rapid-fire dissection by 11 federal judges appeared to raise new doubts and challenges for James Huntsman’s fraud lawsuit against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over its use of tithing. Members of the 9th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco repeatedly interrupted lawyers on both sides during an hourlong hearing Wednesday, pointing out multiple hurdles to any legal examination of the prominent Utahn’s assertions that church leaders lied over spending on City Creek Center and misled him into donating. Church lawyer Paul Clement , a former U.S.
solicitor general, argued that top leaders of the Utah-based faith never misrepresented how they paid $1.4 billion toward the luxury mall in downtown Salt Lake City and that the legal doctrine of church autonomy puts most of the contested issues in the case off-limits to court review. Indeed, going from statements by several judges who spoke up Wednesday , Huntsman’s bid to have his case resuscitated and referred for a trial faces major obstacles.
Even parsing basic terminology in the lawsuit such as the word “tithing” or reviewing what might have been meant in reassuring statements from the pulpit by former church President Gordon B. Hinckley , all seemed likely, the judges said, to run smack-dab into the U.S.
Constitution. Some of the appellate judges also raised new questions about whether Huntsman — a son of the late philanthropist and influential church patron Jon Huntsman Sr. — was legally.