November 23, 2010 - 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rules against Haifan Baha'is of Wilmette, Illinois
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Opinion, Judge Sykes.
Excerpts - Opinion of US 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Case No. 08-2306
http://www.fglaysher.com/bahaicensorship/US_7th_Circuit_Court_of_Appe...
In the
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
No. 08-2306
T HE N ATIONAL S PIRITUAL A SSEMBLY OF THE
B AHÁ’ÍS OF THE U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA
U NDER THE H EREDITARY G UARDIANSHIP, INC.,
Plaintiff,
v.
N ATIONAL S PIRITUAL A SSEMBLY OF THE B AHÁ’ÍS
OF THE U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA , INC .,
Defendant-Appellant,
v.
F RANKLIN D. S CHLATTER, JOEL B. M ARANGELLA,
P ROVISIONAL N ATIONAL B AHÁ’Í C OUNCIL OF THE
U NITED S TATES, et al.,
Respondents-Appellees.
____________
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division.
No. 1:64-cv-01878—Amy J. St. Eve, Judge.
____________
A RGUED F EBRUARY 20, 2009—D ECIDED N OVEMBER 23, 2010
____________
2
No. 08-2306
Before B AUER, M ANION, and SYKES, Circuit Judges.
S YKES, Circuit Judge. This appeal is from a civil-contempt
proceeding alleging violations of an injunction entered
more than four decades ago. The case is complicated not
just by the passage of time but also because it arises in the
context of a religious schism, and the individuals and
groups against whom contempt sanctions are sought were
not parties to the original litigation. The underlying suit
was a trademark and property dispute between the
American Bahá’í church—formally known as the National
Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States of
America, Inc. (“National Spiritual Assembly”)—and a
dissident group incorporated in 1964 under the like-
sounding name of the National Spiritual Assembly of the
Bahá’ís of the United States of America Under the Heredi-
tary Guardianship, Inc. (“Hereditary Guardianship”). In
1966 a district-court judge enjoined the Hereditary Guard-
ianship from using the trademarked names and symbols of
the National Spiritual Assembly. Within months the
Hereditary Guardianship dissolved, and the dissenting
faithful thereafter disagreed among themselves over issues
of spiritual leadership and doctrine. This disagreement
eventually produced a second schism. Over time the
former followers of the Hereditary Guardianship estab-
lished several new religious groups and a publishing firm,
all operating in varying ways in the name of the Bahá’í
faith.
Forty years later, the National Spiritual Assembly
returned to the district court and asked for contempt
sanctions against several of these groups and their princi-
pals for allegedly violating the terms of the 1966 injunction.
No. 08-2306
3
This required proof that the alleged contemnors—all
nonparties to the original lawsuit—were in privity with the
Hereditary Guardianship and therefore bound by the
injunction. In a comprehensive opinion, the district court
rejected the privity claim and on this basis denied the
contempt motion. In reaching this conclusion, the judge
expressly declined to follow the approach to the privity
question adopted by the First Circuit in G. & C. Merriam Co.
v. Webster Dictionary Co., 639 F.2d 29 (1st Cir. 1980). The
judge said that Merriam was in “silent tension” with Judge
Learned Hand’s venerable opinion in Alemite Manufactur-
ing Corp. v. Staff, 42 F.2d 832 (2d Cir. 1930).
We think these two important opinions can be reconciled.
The common-law rule expounded in Alemite—essentially
codified in Rule 65(d) of the Federal Rules of Civil Proce-
dure—holds that an injunction is binding on the parties to
the proceeding; their officers, agents, and employees
(acting in that capacity); and nonparties with notice who
are either “legally identified” with a party or who aid and
abet a party’s violation of the injunction. The “legal
identity” component of this rule often operates to bind a
party’s successors and assigns, and sometimes other
nonparties as well, but only when doing so is consistent
with due process. As such, the “legal identity” justification
for binding nonparties is limited to those who have notice
of the injunction and are so closely identified in interest
with the enjoined party that it is reasonable to conclude
that their rights and interests were adjudicated in the
original proceeding. In Merriam the First Circuit held that
a former employee of an enjoined corporation had such a
key role in the company and in the underlying litigation
4
No. 08-2306
that he could be “legally identified” with the enjoined
corporation and therefore held in contempt for using a
newly formed company to circumvent the injunction. 639
F.2d at 39-40. This is a specific application of the “legal
identity” category of nonparty contempt identified in
Alemite; we do not read Merriam as inconsistent with Judge
Hand’s formulation.
Although the district court should have applied Merriam,
the judge’s findings are thorough enough to permit us to
resolve the privity question without a remand. The respon-
dent nonparty religious groups and their principals are not
sufficiently identified in interest with the Hereditary
Guardianship to permit a conclusion that they had their
day in court back in 1966. We affirm.
I. Background
A. The Bahá’í Schism and the 1966 Injunction
The Bahá’í faith originated in Persia in 1844 with the
teachings of the Báb, who foretold that God would soon
reveal a prophet to the world. In 1863 Bahá’u’lláh, one of
the Báb’s followers, announced that he was this prophet
and began several decades of spiritual teaching and
writing. With Bahá’u’lláh’s death in 1892, spiritual leader-
ship passed to his eldest son, Abdu’l-Bahá. Abdu’l-Bahá
died in 1921, and his eldest grandson, Shoghi Effendi, then
led the faith as its Guardian. Effendi died unexpectedly in
1957 without having clearly designated a successor.
Spiritual authority passed temporarily to the Hands of
the Cause of God, a group of 27 Effendi-appointed spiritual
leaders who stewarded the religion until 1963. At that
No. 08-2306
5
point the Hands transferred supreme authority of
the Bahá’í faith to the newly established Universal House
of Justice in Haifa, Israel.
The National Spiritual Assembly, whose predecessor
organization was formed in the United States in 1909,
recognizes and accepts this described line of succession.
Charles Mason Remey did not. Remey, one of Effendi’s
appointed Hands, proclaimed in 1960 that Effendi’s
spiritual authority had passed to him as the Second
Guardian of the Faith. The other Hands rejected this
claim, believing that Effendi was the first and last Guard-
ian of the Faith, and they expelled Remey from their ranks.
The National Spiritual Assembly likewise views Remey as
a schismatic figure.
In 1962 Remey instructed his followers to establish the
National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United
States Under the Hereditary Guardianship. The
Hereditary Guardianship was incorporated in New Mexico
in 1964, and it served as the coordinating body for
an affiliation of individuals, groups, and local spiritual
assemblies in the United States dedicated to Remey’s
Guardianship. The Hereditary Guardianship itself
was comprised of nine “Members” who essentially acted as
a board of directors and, at least initially, followed Remey’s
declarations and directives.1
In the year of its incorporation, the Hereditary Guardian-
ship commenced a civil action against the National Spiri-
1
For the sake of simplicity, we refer to them as “board mem-
bers.”
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