Court Directs Evangelical Group to Return $5.5 Million to Heiress
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WASHINGTON — An evangelical Christian group ordered to return most of the $6.5 million donated by a wealthy ex-member lost a Supreme Court appeal today.
The court, without comment, let stand rulings that the group, The Bible Speaks, received the donations after exerting undue influence on department store heiress Elizabeth Dayton Dovydenas.
The group now must return $5.5 million.
At issue was whether allowing Dovydenas to rescind her gifts, made over a 12-month period ending in late 1985, violates the religious freedom of The Bible Speaks.
The Bible Speaks appeal was supported in “friend-of-the-court” briefs submitted by the National Council of Churches and by television evangelist Jerry Falwell’s Old-Time Gospel Hour.
Within a three-year period, Dovydenas, an heir to the Dayton Hudson fortune, gave The Bible Speaks over $6.5 million.
Dovydenas’ family, after inviting her to her father’s birthday party in Minnesota in late 1985, hired two “deprogrammers” to talk to her. She later left The Bible Speaks and sued to have her gifts returned.
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