Did the Mormon Church Commit Tithing Fraud? What the Courts Decided in All Three Lawsuits

Updated November 4, 2026

Where things stand

Tithing: a tenth, given back to God

Mormons give a tenth of their income to their church. They call it tithing, and the practice is far older than their faith.

Tithing is a biblical principle. Abraham gave a tenth to the priest Melchizedek (Genesis 14:20). The law of Moses set tithes aside for the Levites (Numbers 18:21–28). Malachi told Israel to bring “all the tithes into the storehouse” (Malachi 3:10). Verified

Latter-day Saints believe the law was restored in an 1838 revelation to Joseph Smith, now Doctrine and Covenants 119. The Church’s General Handbook defines it plainly: “Tithing is the donation of one-tenth of one’s income to God’s Church.” Verified

Under Doctrine and Covenants 120, a council of the First Presidency, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the Presiding Bishopric decides how tithing is used. The Church says the funds build and maintain temples and meetinghouses, support missionary work and educate members, and that all donated funds are considered sacred. It also sets aside a fixed percentage of its income as reserves, a practice President Gordon B. Hinckley described publicly in 1991 and 1995. Verified

Those reserves, and one shopping mall, are where the lawsuits began. (For the wider picture, see our guide to how the Church’s finances work.)

Case 1: James Huntsman · decided on the evidence

James Huntsman, from a prominent Latter-day Saint family, paid tithing from 1993 to 2015, including more than $1 million in cash between 2003 and 2015, before he left the Church. In March 2021 he sued in federal court in Los Angeles for $5 million, arguing that the Church’s City Creek statements were false and that he kept paying because of them. Verified

His case had real support. Nielsen testified that Ensign Peak’s leaders called all of its money “tithing,” principal and earnings alike, and that donations were commingled with earnings. He also said Ensign Peak’s president told him funds were routed through other entities so people would not know Ensign Peak was the source. Public claim In 2023, a three-judge Ninth Circuit panel ruled 2–1 that his City Creek claim deserved a trial. Verified

The Church asked the full court to rehear the case, and 11 judges heard it en banc (as a larger panel of the full court) in September 2024. On January 31, 2025, all 11 ruled for the Church. Verified

The majority found its answer in Hinckley’s own words. He had drawn a line between tithing itself and earnings on invested reserves, and the Church had said for years that those reserves include tithing. Ensign Peak’s records showed about $3.9 billion in earnings in 2003 alone, more than enough to cover the $1.2 billion it earmarked for City Creek in January 2004. That money grew to nearly $1.7 billion before about $1.4 billion was spent on the project from 2007 to 2012. Even taking Nielsen’s account as true, the court said, it did not show that tithing principal was used. Verified

That does not mean tithing played no part in City Creek. Tithing built the reserves whose earnings paid for it, and the court said so. What the court rejected was the claim that the Church hid it.

Huntsman’s second claim, that tithing paid for a $600 million rescue of Beneficial Life in 2009, failed for a simpler reason: he could not point to any Church statement about how that rescue was funded. Verified

The 11–0 vote masked a split over why. Six judges decided the case on the evidence and said the First Amendment had no bearing on it. Four agreed on the evidence but wrote that a suit like this could never succeed under the First Amendment, calling it “extraordinary and patently inappropriate.” One judge would have decided it on the First Amendment alone. Verified

Case 3: The class action · decided on the statute of limitations

The last case was the broadest. In October 2023, Daniel Chappell, John Oaks and Masen Christensen filed a proposed class action in federal court in Utah. Similar suits followed in California, Tennessee and Washington, and in April 2024 a federal panel sent all four to Judge Robert J. Shelby in Salt Lake City. Verified Together, nine plaintiffs sought to represent everyone in the United States who had donated to the Church since 1997, the year Ensign Peak was formed. Documented

Their consolidated complaint made five claims, including fraud and breach of fiduciary duty, and alleged that donations members believed would fund Church work were instead invested and held. Public claim

Judge Shelby dismissed the case with prejudice in April 2025. Lead plaintiffs’ attorney Christopher Seeger said members “have the right to know how these donations are being used.” Church spokesman Sam Penrod called tithing donations “an expression of faith.” Documented On August 31, 2026, a three-judge Tenth Circuit panel affirmed, 3–0. Verified

The ground was time. Utah gives people three years to sue for fraud, counted from when they knew, or with reasonable diligence should have known, the facts. The first suit was filed in October 2023, so the claims were late if the clock started before October 2020. The whistleblower letter and its national coverage came in December 2019. Verified

The plaintiffs argued that the clock started only in May 2023, when 60 Minutes aired a report on the whistleblower, and that most earlier coverage was local or behind paywalls. The court disagreed. It pointed to national coverage and to three other sets of plaintiffs who had sued years earlier, including three members who sued without a lawyer in February 2020. Plaintiffs can be charged, it said, with knowledge of events “so widely reported” that a diligent person should have learned of them. Verified

The appeals court did not decide whether fraud occurred. Judge Shelby had also ruled that the Church owed donors no fiduciary duty and that the plaintiffs had not pleaded reliance on any false statement. The appeals court did not need to reach those holdings. Verified

The question no court answered

The Church and religious organizations filing in its support argued that the First Amendment bars courts from second-guessing how a church defines and spends tithing. Verified Not one tithing claim was decided on that ground, and the judges who addressed it split. Contested

• Ninth Circuit (Huntsman). Six judges said church autonomy, the First Amendment doctrine that keeps courts out of religious questions, had no bearing because their analysis never touched doctrine. Five said the case could not go forward without a court deciding what “tithing” means, which is a religious question. One of the five warned against courts acting as copy editors for religious doctrine.
• Tenth Circuit (Gaddy). The First Amendment barred the Church-history claims. On the tithing claim, two judges saw no need to reach it, and the third wrote that church autonomy does not cover it.
• Tenth Circuit (class action). Not reached.

Even the judges most sympathetic to the Church’s defense drew a limit. Judge Daniel Bress wrote that church autonomy would not shield leaders who fraudulently enrich themselves, and noted that there was no suggestion of self-dealing in City Creek. Verified

The question is live beyond Utah. Deseret News reported in August 2026 that the Supreme Court had recently turned away the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ bid for an early appeal in a similar donor class action, leaving that case to continue in the lower courts. Documented

So the record leaves two things true at once: no court has found that the Church misled tithe payers, and no appeals court majority has held that the First Amendment bars tithing-fraud claims.

Timeline

Sources

Court records

• Huntsman v. Corporation of the President, No. 21-56056 (Ninth Circuit, en banc, Jan. 31, 2025)
• In re: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Tithing Litigation, No. 25-4068 (Tenth Circuit, Aug. 31, 2026)
• Gaddy v. Corporation of the President, No. 23-4110 (Tenth Circuit, Aug. 26, 2025), reproduced in the petition appendix, Supreme Court No. 25-911
• U.S. District Court for the District of Utah, tithing multidistrict litigation No. 3102: case page and transfer order
• District of Utah, memorandum decision dismissing the consolidated complaint (April 2025)

Church sources

• General Handbook, 34.3.1, “Tithing”
• “What Is Tithing?”
• Topics and Questions, “Tithing”
• True to the Faith, “Tithing”
• Doctrine and Covenants 119 and 120
• First Presidency statement on Church finances (Dec. 17, 2019)

News reports

• Salt Lake Tribune, Apr. 21, 2026 (Supreme Court declines Gaddy)
• Deseret News, Aug. 31, 2026 (class-action ruling; nine plaintiffs; the Catholic bishops’ case)
• KUER, Apr. 17, 2025 (Church statement after the dismissal)
• FOX 13, Apr. 2025, Associated Press report (plaintiffs’ counsel statement)
• ABC4 (Gaddy rehearing denied; Supreme Court petition planned)

How we label claims