The Muslims, we might understand. The Jehovah’s Witnesses? They don’t serve in the military, salute the flag, or vote, and there is a rumor they are not supposed to serve as jurors. But the Mormons? They pride themselves on being good American citizens. Why would they be excluded from civic functions like this?

Perhaps there is an impression that Mormons do not serve effectively in secular governmental functions. Is this reasonable? Can the LDS be trusted, for example, to be fair-minded judges and jurors in secular American legal disputes?

I believe this is a legitimate question, based on the proliferation of written opinions where concerns over Mormon religious bias are raised. There seem to be an unusually large number of cases – I counted 35 cases in which it was alleged that Mormon participants as neutral observers in the legal system could not be fair. This number consisted of 19 claims that Mormon judges should be disqualified and 16 cases involving LDS prospective jurors.

The judge cases go back over 50 years and involve allegations that LDS judges could not be fair in disputes involving Fundamentalist Mormons, the Howard Hughes will, the Equal Rights Amendment, corporate disputes involving the Mormon Church, cases involving Mormon victims, and criminal prosecutions involving black people, non-Mormons, drinking and rape [2]. Most of these cases were in Utah, Idaho and Nevada.

Mormon juror cases go back to 1970, and involve concerns that Mormons are more likely to apply the death penalty and that they would biased in sex, obscenity, and Mormon-victim cases and in matters with Mormon witnesses [3].

How about religions that are commonly confused with Mormons? I did not find a single case involving the Christian Scientists. I found one case involving a Seventh-Day Adventist prospective juror, going back over 50 years ago [4].

For the Jehovah’s Witnesses, I found 32 cases, all involving prospective jurors [5]. This could be expected because, as noted above, there are some who view Jehovah’s Witnesses as having a religious obligation not to serve as jurors [6]. Perhaps there are not enough Jehovah’s Witnesses who become judges for their disqualification to be sought.

Most Mormons would be chagrined at the accusation that they cannot effectively serve as judges or jurors, yet there are far more challenges to their fairness than with these other American minority religions, even the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

My strong sense is that parties seek to disqualify Mormon judges on religious grounds more than they do judges from other religions, even the big ones like the Catholics.

Why do I think this? It is because those few other cases I stumbled on – involving the attempted disqualification of Jewish, Catholic and Episcopalian judges – generally cite cases in which recusal is sought of Mormons [7]. If there were other cases involving the religion in question, they presumably would have found and cited them, since it would have been more persuasive authority. The paucity of these cases forced them instead to cite the Mormon cases.

I anticipated that this inferential reasoning would not be good enough for some people, so I set out to look for the actual number cases in which parties sought to remove Catholic judges. The Catholic Church is several times larger than the LDS Church. You would expect that they had far more attempted judge disqualifications.

Guess what? After searching high and low, I could only find 12 Catholic judge disqualification cases, with the first one coming in 1990 [8]. The Mormons, it seems, have even the Catholics beat on this score.
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[1] Bats v. Cobb County, GA, 495 F.Supp.2d 1311 (N.D.Ga. 2007).

[2] Musser v. Third Judicial Dist. Court of Salt Lake County, 106 Utah 373, 148 P.2d 802 (Utah 1944); Hayes v. Forman, 93 Nev. 490, 568 P.2d 579 (Nev. 1977); State of Idaho v. Freeman, 478 F.Supp. 33 (D. Id. 1979); State of Idaho v. Freeman, 507 F.Supp. 706 (D. Id. 1981); Singer v. Wadman, 745 F.2d 606 (10th Cir. 1984); Orr v. Orr,108 Idaho 874, 702 P.2d 912 (Idaho App.,1985); Winslow v. Lehr, 641 F.Supp. 1237 (D.Colo. 1986); Fuller v. Harding, 699 F.Supp. 64 (E.D.Pa. 1988); Schmidt v. Medley,935 F.2d 278 (10th Cir. 1991); Snyder v. Viani,112 Nev. 568, 916 P.2d 170 (Nev.,1996); Bakalov v. State of Utah, 4 Fed.Appx. 654 (10th Cir. 2001); In re McCarthey, 368 F.3d 1266 (10th Cir. 2004); Salt Lake Tribune Pub. Co., LLC v. AT & T Corp., 353 F.Supp.2d 1160 (D.Utah,2005);. U.S. v. Maness, 2006 WL 1663843 (D.Alaska 2006); U.S. v. Kahre, , 2007 WL 2110500 (D.Nev. 2007); Sherratt v. Friel, 2007 WL 2815314 (D.Utah,2007); Ventress v. Japan Airlines, 2008 WL 763185 (D.Hawai‘I 2008); Sherratt v. Friel, 275 Fed.Appx. 763 (10th Cir. 2008); U.S. v. Kahre, 2008 WL 5246034 (D.Nev. 2008)

[3] State v. Kay, 25 Utah 2d 43, 475 P.2d 541 (Utah 1970); Robinson v. Wolff,349 F.Supp. 514 (D.Neb.) 1972; U. S. v. Credit, 2 M.J. 631 (AFCMR 1976); State v. Lamb, 116 Ariz. 134, 568 P.2d 1032 (Ariz. 1977); Piepenburg v. Cutler, 649 F.2d 783 (10th Cir. 1981); U.S. v. Wolters, 656 F.2d 523 (9th Cir. 1981); U.S. v. Affleck, 776 F.2d 1451 (10th Cir. 1985); Paradis v. Arave, 667 F.Supp. 1361 (D.Id. 1987); Hornsby v. Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 758 P.2d 929 (Utah Ct.App.1988), Seagrave v. Gomez, 974 F.2d 1343 (9th Cir. 1992); State v. Wood, 868 P.2d 70 (Utah 1993); State v. Bowman, 124 Idaho 936, 866 P.2d 193 (Idaho App. 1993); State v. Fuller, 182 N.J. 174, 862 A.2d 1130 (N.J. 2004); People v. Proffitt, 2003 WL 21711374 (Cal.App. 4 Dist. 2003); State v. Wood, 868 P.2d 70 (Utah 1993); People v. Mays, 2007 WL 2774702 (Cal.App. 6 Dist. 2007).

[4] People v. Weitz, 255 P.2d 40 (Cal.App. 3 Dist. 1953)

[5] Mathis v. State, 167 Tex.Crim. 627, 322 S.W.2d 629 (Tex.Cr.App. 1959); U.S. v. Dangler, 422 F.2d 344 (5th Cir. 1970); State v. Jackson, 317 N.C. 1, 343 S.E.2d 814 (N.C. 1986); Chambers v. State, 724 S.W.2d 440 (Tex.App.-Hous. [14 Dist.] 1987); Powell v. Bowersox, 895 F.Supp. 1298 (E.D.Mo. 1995); State v. Watkins, 114 N.J. 259, 553 A.2d 1344 (N.J. 1989); People v. Sanchez, 208 Cal.App.3d 721, 256 Cal.Rptr. 446 (Cal.App.4.Dist. 1989); People v. Tyburski, 196 Mich.App. 576, 494 N.W.2d 20 (Mich.App. 1992); People v. Hill, 3 Cal.4th 959, 13 Cal.Rptr.2d 475 (Cal. 1992); State v. Davis, 1993 WL 593 (Minn.App. 1993); State v. Davis, 504 N.W.2d 767 (Minn. 1993); Davis v. Minnesota, 511 U.S. 1115, 114 S.Ct. 2120 (1994); State v. Eason, 336 N.C. 730, 445 S.E.2d 917 (N.C. 1994); People v. Woods, 643 N.E.2d 1331 (Ill.App. 1 Dist. 1994); People v. Brown, 1996 WL 33357148 (Mich.App. 1996); Sudul v. City of Hamtramck, 221 Mich.App. 455, 562 N.W.2d 478 (Mich.App.,1997); People v. Martin, 64 Cal.App.4th 378, 75 Cal.Rptr.2d 147 (Cal.App.1.Dist.1998); State v. Tucker, 334 S.C. 1, 512 S.E.2d 99 (S.C. 1999); Hodges v. State, 856 So.2d 875 (Ala.Crim.App.,2001); People v. Cash, 28 Cal.4th 703, 122 Cal.Rptr.2d 545 (Cal. 2002); State v. Dehaney, 261 Conn. 336, 803 A.2d 267 (Conn. 2002); U.S. v. Kincade, 345 F.3d 1095 (9th Cir. 2003); State v. Wise, 359 S.C. 14, 596 S.E.2d 475 (S.C.,2004); Hodges v. State, — So.2d —-, 2007 WL 866658 (Ala.Crim.App. 2007); People v. Juarez, 2007 WL 1140468 (Cal.App. 4 Dist. 2007); Castro v. State, 233 S.W.3d 46 (Tex.App.-Houston [1 Dist.] 2007); Hyde v. Branker, 2007 WL 2827411 (E.D.N.C. 2007); Persad v. Conway, 2008 WL 268812 (E.D.N.Y. 2008); People v. Schreiber, 2008 WL 1810305 (Cal.App. 3 Dist. 2008); Com. v. Dennis, 597 Pa. 159, 950 A.2d 945 (Pa. 2008); In re Pilshaw, 286 Kan. 574, 186 P.3d 708 (Kan 2008); People v. Avila, 46 Cal.4th 680, 208 P.3d 634 (Cal. 2009); Ali v. Hickman, 571 F.3d 902 (9th Cir. 2009).

[6] In re Jenison, 265 Minn. 96, 120 N.W.2d 515 (Minn.1963); State v. Everly, 150 W.Va. 423, 146 S.E.2d 705 (W.Va. 1966); Petition of Williams, 474 F.Supp. 384 (D.Ariz. 1979); U.S. v. Maskeny, 609 F.2d 183 (5th Cir. 1980); Wilson v. Georgetown County, 316 S.C. 92, 447 S.E.2d 841 (S.C. 1994)

[7] U.S. v. Fiat Motors of North America, Inc., 512 F.Supp. 247 (D.D.C. 1981); Menora v. Illinois High School Ass’n, 527 F.Supp. 632 (N.D. Ill. 1981); U.S. v. El-Gabrowny, 844 F.Supp. 955 (S.D.N.Y. 1994); Petruska v. Gannon University, 2007 WL 3072237 (W.D.Pa. 2007).

[8] Sabatier v. Suntrust Bank, Slip Copy, 2009 WL 2430892 (S.D.Fla. 2009); Paul v. D & B Tile of Hialeah, Inc., Slip Copy, 2009 WL 2430901 (S.D.Fla. 2009); Bettis v. Toys R Us, — F.Supp.2d —-, 2009 WL 2423752 (S.D.Fla. 2009); Hoatson v. New York Archdiocese, 280 Fed.Appx. 88, 2008 WL 2235607 (2nd Cir. 2008); Petruska v. Gannon University, 2007 WL 3072237 (W.D.Pa 2007); Hoatson v. New York Archdiocese, 2006 WL 3500633 (S.D.N.Y. 2006); In re Disqualification of McDonnell, 101 Ohio St.3d 1223, 803 N.E.2d 822, 2003 WL 23209396, 2003 -Ohio- 7357 (Ohio 2003); U.S. v. Arena, 180 F.3d 380, 1999 WL 365271, 52 Fed. R. Evid. Serv. 908 (2nd Cir. 1999); In re Disqualification of Fuerst, 77 Ohio St.3d 1253, 674 N.E.2d 361, 1996 WL 734380 (Ohio 1996); Rizzuto v. Rematt, 273 Ill.App.3d 447, 653 N.E.2d 34, 210 Ill.Dec. 447, 1995 WL 383314 (Ill.App. 1 Dist. 1995); Feminist Women’s Health Center v. Codispoti, 69 F.3d 399, 1995 WL 649927, 95 Cal. Daily Op. Serv. 8594, 95 Daily Journal D.A.R. 14,830 (9th Cir. 1995); Savage v. Trammell Crow Co., 223 Cal.App.3d 1562, 273 Cal.Rptr. 302, 1990 WL 137572 (Cal.App. 4 Dist. 1990).