D.D.C. No. 24-cv-02523Confirmed
A federal judge in Washington threw the case out in September 2025 — not on its merits, but because the lawsuit papers had never been validly delivered. On 23 July 2026 he undid that dismissal, giving the Jehovah's Witnesses' Pennsylvania corporation 180 days to serve the Russian Federation, its health ministry and the state institute now using the site, this time through diplomatic channels. Documents filed with the complaint valued the property at more than $30 million. As of that opinion the court had decided nothing about whether a U.S. court can hear the claim at all.
· July 23, 2026 · 9 min read
LegalReported
Meleah Thompson says she was abused as a child by men connected to her Oregon congregation in the early 1990s and that elders, told of it, invoked the two-witness rule and expelled her instead. Her suit, filed 20 July 2026, argues the coerced sexual acts were 'services' under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act and that Watchtower knowingly benefited from concealing them. The allegations are unproven and no defendant had responded on the docket as of 24 July.
· July 20, 2026 · 8 min read
D.N.J. No. 25-cv-01459Confirmed
A federal judge dismissed the congregation's bid to escape a 1999 payment-in-lieu-of-taxes deal on its Turnersville assembly hall, ruling only that a federal court is the wrong forum — she decided nothing about whether the hall is tax-exempt. The congregation appealed, then dropped the appeal on 21 July 2026, the day its opening brief was due, leaving that dismissal to stand.
· Updated July 25, 2026 · 12 min read
New York federal copyright rulingConfirmed
Judge Kenneth M. Karas denied the anonymous Jehovah's Witness's motion to cancel a DMCA subpoena to Cloudflare on 21 July 2026, but the subpoena stays frozen and the archivist has not been identified: a fight over a protective order comes next.
· July 21, 2026 · 14 min read
Kings County, Index No. 522573/2026Confirmed
Two of three defendant organizations have now appeared through counsel in this unproven Brooklyn abuse suit; the judge will decide the plaintiff's anonymity request on the papers, not at a hearing. Filed 16 June 2026 under a January 2026 amendment reviving decades-old claims and extending liability to institutions.
· Updated July 24, 2026 · 16 min read
LegalReported
A judge paused this unproven $100 million case on 4 May 2026 at the Governing Body's request. The complaint, filed in Manhattan federal court on Nov. 12, 2025, alleges a Circuit Overseer abused Stella Cristina Gomes De Souza beginning at age 12 in Brazil and that Watchtower routed reports internally. The plaintiff asked the judge to reconsider on 18 May. A pause is not a dismissal. This account runs to the docket's last entry, 1 June 2026.
· Updated July 22, 2026 · 16 min read
UN Working Group on Arbitrary DetentionConfirmed
Opinion No. 30/2026 finds the detentions arbitrary under categories I, II and V and recommends release plus compensation. Russia responded nine days after the deadline, citing the extremism designation; the panel could not accept the reply as timely. The opinion is not binding, and the Working Group made no finding of torture or unfair trial.
· March 30, 2026 · 10 min read
RussiaConfirmed
The Committee's 13 March 2026 ruling found unlawful arrest, religious discrimination and denial of minority rights in a 2018 Ufa case, and ordered unspecified compensation. It also dismissed several claims, refused an earlier emergency request, and has no power to enforce anything.
· March 13, 2026 · 12 min read
LegalConfirmed
In sister Child Victims Act cases over Robert Warne, a ministerial servant at a Middleport, N.Y. congregation, a court denied Watchtower's bid to shield its nationwide reports of known abusers and pierced clergy privilege over his confession letter — before both suits settled in 2026. The Governing Body was dismissed from one case and kept in the other.
· May 22, 2026 · 7 min read
The Bundesgerichtshof did not award the more-than-1,000-document archive to anyone; it found the lower court used the wrong standard on good-faith acquisition and sent the case back.Confirmed
Germany's Federal Court of Justice quashed a Cologne ruling and remanded the dispute over the Kusserow family archive held in a Dresden military museum. Ownership remains undecided.
· June 26, 2026 · 6 min read
The Chamber found only a violation; the three-month Grand Chamber referral window stays open into September 2026, and no Bulgarian Government response was located.Confirmed
In Velev and Others v. Bulgaria, a unanimous ECHR Chamber found a Shumen ordinance banning "religious propaganda at residents' homes" violated Article 9. No damages were awarded, the applicants were never fined, and the ruling is not yet final.
· June 9, 2026 · 8 min read
Whether Italy will now ratify the agreement or seek Grand Chamber referral was not addressed in any government statement located in the sources reviewed; the three-month referral window runs to roughly 11 September 2026.Confirmed
In a unanimous but not-yet-final Chamber judgment (application no. 49687/16), the ECHR held that Italy's decades-long failure to ratify an intesa kept Jehovah's Witnesses out of the otto per mille tax-funding system. The Court awarded EUR 10,000 and EUR 8,000 in costs, dismissing a claim that had sought more than EUR 200 million.
· June 11, 2026 · 7 min read
The Swedish thread mirrors Norway's: whether a state may withhold public funding from a religious group over its internal membership and shunning practices.Confirmed
Sweden's Agency for Support to Faith Communities (SST) ruled on 24 October 2025 that Jehovah's Witnesses failed new 'democracy conditions' for state grants, citing shunning and membership limits. On 7 May 2026 the Stockholm Administrative Court overturned the denial and ordered the grant restored; the agency has appealed.
· October 24, 2025 · 4 min read
LegalReported
Shannon Simendinger's civil complaint, filed January 8, 2025 in Aroostook County Superior Court, names a Maine congregation, Watchtower's New York corporation, and three men; the allegations are unproven and the case is pending.
· January 8, 2025 · 5 min read
LegalReported
A federal complaint filed February 13, 2026, alleges the Governing Body and three Watchtower entities failed to protect a Cordele teenager from more than 100 acts of abuse by his Bible-study instructor, who is separately convicted. The organization's alleged liability is unproven; the case is pending.
· February 13, 2026 · 5 min read
A duty judge authorized transfusions on the basis of a fax the Court found 'very limited, incorrect and incomplete.'Confirmed
In Pindo Mulla v. Spain, the ECHR Grand Chamber unanimously found that Spain breached Rosa Edelmira Pindo Mulla's rights when a duty judge authorized three transfusions during emergency surgery despite her advance written refusals. The Court faulted the decision-making process, not the doctors' medical judgment.
· September 17, 2024 · 8 min read
Pennsylvania statewide grand-jury investigationConfirmed
A statewide investigating grand jury opened in 2019 produced criminal charges against roughly nine men affiliated with Jehovah's Witnesses congregations, across waves announced by Attorneys General Josh Shapiro (2022) and Michelle Henry (2023), alongside scrutiny of how congregations handle abuse reports internally.
· October 27, 2022 · 6 min read
The $40 million judgment names one man who did not contest it; the church's separate settlement stays sealed.Confirmed
In 2023, Judge Dean Ochiai awarded a survivor known as N.D. $40 million against Kenneth Apana, a former Makaha congregation elder who did not defend the suit. The congregation and its entities settled separately and confidentially.
· July 18, 2023 · 6 min read
RulingConfirmed
The European Court of Human Rights ruled on 9 May 2023 that Finland may require Jehovah's Witnesses to obtain householder consent before noting personal data during their ministry — no violation of Articles 9 or 6.
· May 9, 2023 · 3 min read
LegalConfirmed
The Court of Cassation on 19 December 2023 rejected the final appeals in the "Ghent case," affirming that limiting contact with disfellowshipped former members falls within freedom of religion and association.
· December 19, 2023 · 2 min read
Australia's National Redress SchemeConfirmed
Named in July 2020 among institutions refusing to join the National Redress Scheme, the organization agreed in March 2021 to comply after the government moved to strip holdout charities of their tax status.
· March 3, 2021 · 3 min read
PersecutionConfirmed
By mid-2018 the 2017 "extremist" ban had become a countrywide campaign of home raids and prosecutions — dozens charged across more than a dozen regions, with masked officers and pre-trial detention.
· June 28, 2018 · 2 min read
ReportConfirmed
Commissioned after survivors came forward and published over the organization's court challenge, the 2020 Utrecht University study documented 751 abuse reports and found the Witnesses' internal handling favored the community, not the victim.
· January 23, 2020 · 5 min read
RulingConfirmed
In Highwood Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses v. Wall, a unanimous Supreme Court of Canada held in 2018 that a religious group's decision to disfellowship a member is beyond judicial review — closing a legal avenue for the shunned.
· May 31, 2018 · 5 min read
ExtremismConfirmed
In March 2016 the Prosecutor General's office told the Witnesses' Russian headquarters it faced dissolution for "extremist activity," and a Moscow court rejected the appeal that autumn — the paper trail to the 2017 ban.
· March 2, 2016 · 2 min read
CensorshipConfirmed
In 2017 a Russian court declared the Witnesses' New World Translation "extremist" — sidestepping a law that protects scripture by accepting expert testimony that the translation was not really a Bible.
· August 17, 2017 · 5 min read
RulingConfirmed
In the Padron case, an appeals court upheld daily discovery sanctions against the Watchtower over its refusal to produce responses to a 1997 abuse-reporting letter — and held it couldn't object to a penalty it had once sought itself.
· November 9, 2017 · 2 min read
LawsuitConfirmed
A former member sought to sue the organization on behalf of Quebecers abused as children in its congregations, alleging a "culture of silence." A court authorized the class action in 2019.
· September 15, 2017 · 2 min read
SafeguardingConfirmed
A 2017 Charity Commission inquiry into the Manchester New Moston congregation found trustees mishandled abuse allegations — including an internal hearing where victims were questioned by the man they accused.
· July 26, 2017 · 2 min read
RulingConfirmed
The Court of Appeal refused to quash the Charity Commission's inquiry into how the Jehovah's Witnesses' British charity handles abuse allegations — the next-to-last round of a fight the Watch Tower would ultimately lose.
· March 15, 2016 · 2 min read
InquiryConfirmed
In July 2015 an Australian Royal Commission opened public hearings into the Jehovah's Witnesses — and revealed that the organization's own files documented 1,006 alleged abusers since 1950, not one reported by the church to police.
· July 27, 2015 · 5 min read
AppealConfirmed
A 2012 jury delivered a landmark verdict against the Watchtower for a woman abused as a child. In 2015 an appeals court affirmed the organization's negligence but erased the punitive damages — and rejected a duty to warn the congregation.
· April 13, 2015 · 5 min read
RulingConfirmed
In 2014 a judge entered a default judgment against the organization for refusing to hand over its internal child-abuse files. An appeals court reversed it in 2016 — but the fight over those records would recur for years.
· October 29, 2014 · 5 min read
CensorshipConfirmed
A Ministry of Justice listing in July 2015 made Russia the only country to ban jw.org — the end of a two-year court fight, and a step toward the nationwide ban that followed in 2017.
· July 21, 2015 · 2 min read
RulingConfirmed
In December 2014 the High Court declined Watch Tower's bid to halt the Charity Commission inquiry, ruling only that the charity had to use the specialist tribunal first — not that the inquiry was lawful.
· December 12, 2014 · 2 min read
SafeguardingConfirmed
In May 2014 the Charity Commission launched a statutory inquiry into how the Watch Tower's British arm handles child protection — the start of a legal fight that would run for nearly a decade.
· May 27, 2014 · 2 min read
RulingConfirmed
In April 2026 Norway's highest court ruled the state acted unlawfully when it deregistered Jehovah's Witnesses and cut their funding over shunning. The justices were unanimous that the state had not shown harm to children — and split only on a separate question about adults. It was the end of a five-year fight, and part of a wider European reckoning.
· April 29, 2026 · 8 min read
RulingConfirmed
A 2018 Montana jury ordered the Watchtower to pay about $35 million for failing to report a child's abuse. In 2020 the state's Supreme Court erased the verdict — unanimously — not on the facts, but on a clergy-confidentiality exception in the reporting law. The collision it turned on is still unresolved across the country.
· September 26, 2018 · 11 min read
Religious freedomConfirmed
A 2017 Supreme Court ruling outlawed the organization nationwide, liquidated 395 local entities, and seized property — without a single finding of violence. Europe's top human-rights court later called the whole campaign unlawful, but Russia, by then out of the Council of Europe, refused to comply.
· April 20, 2017 · 12 min read
Free speechConfirmed
An appeals court dismissed the organization's suit against a Spanish victims' association, holding the label falls within freedom of expression. The court did not rule on whether the characterization is true.
· April 16, 2026 · 3 min read
InquiryConfirmed
In 2015 a national inquiry examined how the Jehovah's Witnesses organization in Australia responded to child sexual abuse. Its records showed 1,006 alleged perpetrators since 1950 — none reported by the organization to police.
· August 14, 2015 · 5 min read