User:Extraordinary Writ/Ballard v. United States

Ballard v. United States,, was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States involving the ability of women to serve on federal juries.

Background
Guy Ballard and his wife Edna founded the "I AM" Activity, a neo-Theosophical religious group avowing belief in Ascended Masters, including Saint Germain and Jesus, who are capable of mediating between the "I AM" Presence and humans. Claiming to be "Accredited Messengers" of the Ascended Masters, the Ballards garnered over a million followers by the late 1930s. Guy Ballard died in 1939; although Edna claimed that he had become an Ascended Master, "the fact that Guy Ballard had experienced a physical death rather than bodily ascension threatened the movement's credibility", according to the scholar James R. Lewis. Edna and her son Donald were indicted on charges of mail fraud. The indictment stated that the Ballards had intentionally made false claims that they were divine messengers who had successfully cured the diseases of hundreds  with intent to defraud.

The judge instructed the jury that it was not to consider whether the Ballards' beliefs were in fact false, but instead only whether the Ballards believed their beliefs to be false. The jury convicted the defendants, but the Court of Appeals reversed and remanded for a new trial, holding that the jury should have been permitted to consider whether the Ballards' beliefs were actually true or false. The Supreme Court, in United States v. Ballard (1944), agreed with the trial court that the truth or falsity of religious beliefs should not be determined by a jury. Writing for the Court, Justice William O. Douglas opined: "Heresy trials are foreign to our Constitution. Men may believe what they cannot prove. They may not be put to the proof of their religious beliefs and doctrines." The Court remanded the case to the Court of Appeals to decide the remaining issues that it posed.

At the time of the Ballards' trial, women were eligible to serve on juries under California law, but in practice the state courts summoned only men for jury duty. Federal law required that federal jurors "shall have the same qualifications...as those of the highest court of law of the state". Endeavoring to follow the practices of California courts, the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, which heard the Ballards' case, similarly refused to summon women for jury service.