Utah Supreme Court to weigh in on FLDS trust issues

SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Supreme Court will hear two arguments relating to the Fundamentalist LDS Church Wednesday, including one asking the justices to overrule a lower court decision authorizing the sale of land they consider sacred.

The hearings are the latest in what has become an ongoing conflict between members of the polygamous group and the state. The struggle between the two has been ongoing since the United Effort Plan trust was accused of abusing its financial powers and a state judge appointed a fiduciary, Bruce Wisan, five years ago.

The UEP was established in 1942 and was fashioned after the United Order, a 19th-century religious concept under which church members donate all their assets to a communal organization and everyone would share so there would be no poverty or materialism.

Utah took over financial oversight of the UEP in 2005 amid allegations of mismanagement by the group's leader, Warren Jeffs, who is now in prison in Arizona for being an accomplice to rape. He faces other felony charges in Arizona and Texas.

According to court documents filed in the case, the trust was set up, ideally, to "protect the FLDS people."

"The FLDS leaders were using the trust as a tool to expel boys from their homes and families and force preteen and teenage girls to enter into 'spiritual marriages' with men often decades older," one court document alleged.

But FLDS members believe their rights of religious freedom were violated by the reformation and seizure of the trust. In court documents they say the state control of the trust "is an arrogation of state power over religious freedom on a scale not seen since this court dealt with an historical precedent more than a century ago."

When the sale of Berry Knoll Farm, a 438-acre stretch of land set aside as a building site for a temple, was proposed in 2008, the FLDS filed a lawsuit to block the sale. Third District Judge Denise Lindberg authorized the sale of that land in August 2009, a decision that the church is asking the Supreme Court to reverse.

In effect, FLDS leaders are asking for a declaration that their Constitutional rights were violated, an injunction that will prevent Lindberg from taking further action to administer the trust and a termination of the court-appointed special fiduciary as administrator of the trust. End of the year reports from 2009 indicate that the trust is in debt — now estimated at over $3 million — with the vast majority of the additional debt being incurred to fight ongoing litigation. A spokesman for Wisan said the fiduciary had no choice but to sell assets held by the trust to keep FLDS members from losing their homes.