Diskeeper Accused of Scientology Indoctrination

touretzky writes "Two ex-employees have sued Diskeeper Corporation in Los Angeles Superior Court after being fired, alleging that the company makes Scientology training a mandatory condition of employment (complaint, PDF). Diskeeper founder and CEO Craig Jensen is a high-level, publicly avowed Scientologist who has given millions to his Church. Diskeeper's surprising response to the lawsuit (PDF) appears to be that religious instruction in a place of employment is protected by the First Amendment." The blogger at RealityBasedCommunity.net believes that the legal mechanism that Diskeeper is using to advance this argument ("motion to strike") is inappropriate and will be disallowed, but that the company will eventually be permitted to present its novel legal theory.

Comments

Wow

[QuietLagoon]

I guess it is Raxco's PerfectDisk to defrag my disks from now on....

Re:Wow

[Dan541]

Well I don't want that criminal cult having anything even remotely to do with my system.

Re:Wow

[Jafafa Hots]

Not to mention the idea of patronizing companies who treat their employees well over patronizing those who mistreat them. And forced Scientology training is certainly mistreatment.

Re:Wow

[cdrudge]

I don't actively seek out actors that are part of Scientology, but if I know that they are then I usually try to avoid it. I can't stand any of Tom Cruise's recent work. Ditto for John Travola but I do admit I've seen a few more of his. Battlefield Earth was watched just to see how horrible it was (it is) as well as Face/Off and Punisher just to see him killed in the movie. While it's not a movie, I use to watch JAG on TV when it was on but once I discovered Catherine Bell was into Scientology, she didn't look nearly as soft on the eyes.

What the hell?

[DurendalMac]

Isn't that religious discrimination in the workplace? Seems like a cut and dried case to me. I'm sure the Co$ will lawyer up and try to fight it, but I don't see how they could possibly win this case.

Re:What the hell?

[eosp]

Then you're a yoga instruction facility, and get taxed as such.

Re:What the hell?

[Anonymous Coward]

A tenet of scientology is that it's okay to lie, cheat, and steal. The doctrine of "Fair Game" (note that if you're a paid-up scientologist you may have a web filter helpfully installed that blocks or modifies that page).

It is almost cheesy-movie-villain evil. If someone claims to be a scientologist in particular, they are saying they're fine with that and therefore trusting them would be totally insane.

That is in marked contrast to real religions, which tend to at least have at their core some variant of "be excellent unto eachother" (even if a power-hungry priesthood fucks it up in practice), the so-called "Golden Rule". While I'm an atheist, I do believe if more people followed the basic humanistic teachings attributed to, say, Jesus or the Buddha, the world would be a better place. If everyone followed the crazed teachings of L. Ron Hubbard, the world would be a nightmarish hellhole.

Re:What the hell?

[Count Fenring]

Or, rather, we call cutting off the entirety of the pleasure-generating organ in females the same thing we call trimming small amounts of skin in males.

"Circumcision is bad" is a potentially legitimate position to hold, but if you think it's remotely comparable to what gets called "Female circumcision," you're way off base.

Re:What the hell?

[hedwards]

This doesn't follow at all. The first amendment guarantees individuals the right to practice their religion of choice. It does not grant the right to force religion on others nor does it allow for a corporation to force a religion on the workers.

This'll end up going down in flames with either a settlement or precedence being set in favor of the employees.

As far as employment requirements go, the first amendment doesn't apply at all, the relevant rules are from case law and human rights legislation. Religious beliefs do qualify a person as a protected class regardless of the particular religion and as such they cannot be used as a method for choosing candidates for non-religious jobs. Basically unless you're hiring for clergy or similar you're not going to be able to get away with it.

Re:What the hell?

[h4rm0ny]

You were probably canned for being a bitch.

Knowing neither person, your willingness to make an assumption one way or the other says more about you than it does about anyone else.

Re:What the hell?

[h4rm0ny]

You don't have to be crazy to join a cult, just vulnerable. And that's all of us at some point.

Discrminiation. Period.

[EdIII]

Diskeeper is not a country club. It's not some sort of fraternal organization of old men in funny hats.

It is a COMPANY. It EMPLOYS People.

Religious preferences, or training has nothing at all to do with the ability to program software. So it's not like some big hairy dude getting mad since the strip club won't let him on the pole.

The laws are extraordinarily clear about this. You cannot base your decisions on whether to employ somebody, or to continue employing them based on religion. The 1st Amendment does not apply here. Last time I checked PEOPLE, NOT CORPORATIONS enjoyed constitutional protections such as the 1st Amendment.

It's a novel argument, but it won't last 60 seconds in court.

Re:California is a at will state

[OrangeTide]

Good to know, that means I won't have to hire Blacks, cripples or homosexuals either.
Oh wait, that's not how it really works now is it?

Re:Religion: the ultimate free pass

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people don't feel they need to behave unless there is an omniscient parental figure monitoring their every thought. Essentially a large group of people never progressed beyond childhood. They are just children with a job and a mortgage.

Redundancy in TFS

[6Yankee]

Diskeeper founder and CEO Craig Jensen is a high levelI, publicly avowed Scientologist who has given millions to his Church ...but we're repeating ourselves...

Re:It doesn't work like that.

[Jeian]

As one of my professors loved to say:

You can fire someone for no reason, but you can't fire them for the wrong reason.

Re:It doesn't work like that.

[SBFCOblivion]

Forcing someone to actively practice a religion is probably illegal

There's no 'probably' about it. It is illegal.

but requiring someone to be knowledgeable in the religions practices even if it requires training, probably isn't anymore illegal than requiring someone to receive training about how to operate a piece of machinery.

Cause that makes sense. A company that develops software would have need of its employees being knowledgeable in any religion.

Re:When referring to Scientology....

[justinlee37]

Now you truly understand how agnostics and atheists feel about you.

You can tell if it's a religion by ...

[antispam_ben]

A religion does two things: Prays to God, and passes the collection basket.

Scientology is not a religion.

Alcoholics Anonymous is a religion.

Re:How ironic it would be

[nicklott]

Only a very tiny percentage of Microsoft's customers read this site. I'd wager that a significantly larger percentage of diskeeper's do.

Who Cares About Reiser?

[maz2331]

I personally don't care if the developer killed his wife or not - if the filesystem works, it works.

Re:Another Reason to Avoid Windows

[cp.tar]

While working at a place may have you end up with forced Scientology indoctrination, I really don't think a file system is going to make you kill your wife.

However, I'd say that a program with a root-level access to the disk made by a Scientologist is a risky thing to have on your computer. While the CoS has officially abandoned their Fair Game doctrine, I would not go so far as to assume it is completely abandoned in practice. Maybe I'm paranoid, but techincally, the moment you oppose them, your data may be theirs. It's not like we can inspect the source.