United States v. Ballard
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United States v. Ballard, 322 U.S. 78 (1944), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that the truth of religious beliefs asserted by defendants in a fraud case should not have been submitted to a jury, despite the purportedly fraudulent claim by the named defendant that he was a 'divine messenger,' imbued by God with the power to heal. 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."
Justice Robert Jackson, dissenting, would have gone even farther, suggesting that the entire case should be dismissed for coming too close to being an investigation into the truth of a religious conviction.
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