The appellants had been members of Samoan-speaking wards of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (‘the Church’) who had brought an action against the Church alleging unlawful direct and indirect racial discrimination. As part of a restructuring exercise, the Church had disbanded the Samoan-speaking wards and had announced that members could no longer use any other language than English during public worship in the Church.

In the first-instance decision, the Federal Magistrate rejected both the direct and the indirect discrimination claim, found that there was no right or fundamental freedom to the provision of public worship services in their native tongue and held that the appellants' freedom to practise their religion freely had not been interfered with and that they were at liberty to manifest their religious beliefs. The appellants appealed.

On appeal, the appellants argued that the Federal Magistrate had failed to address the question of whether there was a right to public worship as a group in their native language. The Court accepted that the right to freedom of religion includes the freedom, either individually or as a group, to engage in public worship. Nevertheless, where the appellants disagreed with the decision to ban the use of the Samoan language in public worship, their freedom of religion was preserved by their ability to leave the Church. The right to freedom of religion does not indiscriminately guarantee an individual's right to worship publicly in a particular language of importance to them and as such there had been no unlawful discrimination. The appeal was dismissed. [RA]