United States v. Ballard

United States v. Ballard, 322 U.S. 78 (1944), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that the First Amendment precludes courts from instructing juries to adjudicate the truth or falsity of religious beliefs.

The case arose from the appeal of the conviction of two leaders of the new religious "I AM" Activity movement for fraudulently seeking and collecting donations on the basis of religious claims that the defendants themselves allegedly did not believe.

The Supreme Court held that the question of whether the defendants' claims about their religious experiences were actually true should not have been submitted to a jury. The Court arrived at this conclusion in part because the "freedom of religious belief... embraces the right to maintain theories of life and of death and of the hereafter which are rank heresy to followers of the orthodox faiths." The Court did not address whether the sincerity of the defendants' beliefs was a proper question for the jury.

Justice Robert H. Jackson, dissenting, would have gone farther, suggesting that the entire case should be dismissed for coming too close to being an investigation into the truth of a religious conviction. He would have held unconstitutional a jury determination of whether the defendants' religious beliefs were sincere, as well as whether they were true.