Appeals: Victory for the Scientologists

Food and Drug Administration agents who raided the headquarters of an organization known as the Founding Church of Scientology six years ago confiscated neither food nor drugs. Instead, they carted off books, pamphlets, and a collection of electronic gadgets called E-meters. In court, the Government said that the literature had made misleading statements about the machines' curative powers and had thus violated the fed eral law against improper labeling. A federal jury agreed. Last week, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., reversed that decision.

Until the Government can refute the claim that Scientology is a religion, said the court, the E-meters and their accompanying leaflets are protected from seizure by the right of freedom of worship—which puts them beyond the reach of the FDA.

Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, 57, is an evangelist who contends that his E-meters can not only detect unhealthy habit patterns that he calls "engrams," but can also pick up subtle emanations from such inanimate objects as a tomato (TIME, Aug. 23). As part of the "audit," a person holds two soup cans that are connected to the E-meter, a crude galvanometer that supposedly translates slight variations in voltage into a measurement of emotional reaction. The interviews, which are conducted by trained Scientologists, sound like a cross between psychoanalysis and an encounter with a Zen master, all in the language of computer technology. To reach an advanced stage of enlightenment may cost a believer as much as $15,000 for tuition, equipment and lodging at Scientology centers.

In the decision, Judge J. Skelly Wright pointed out that, from the Scientologists' point of view, the "auditing or processing is a central practice of their religion, akin to confession in the Catholic Church." Furthermore, said Wright, Scientology's leaders claim that the E-meter is not used to diagnose or treat physical disease. They insist that they are treating the spirit, and through the spirit, hope to cure the body.

In the absence of proof to the contrary, said Wright, the literature accompanying the E-meters must be treated as Scripture. To bolster his opinion, Judge Wright pointed out that Hubbard's organization is incorporated as a church in the District of Columbia and that its ministers are even qualified to perform marriages and burial rites.