The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints filed a lawsuit this spring against John Dehlin, an excommunicated former member, demanding he stop calling his podcast Mormon Stories and alleging he copied the church's branding to capitalize on confusion.
The lawsuit marks an aggressive legal move by a church that spent years distancing itself from the very word it now claims to control. In 2019, church president Russell M Nelson declared that using "Mormon" constituted "a major victory for Satan" and announced the organization would be known only by its full name moving forward. The church renamed its tabernacle choir, shuttered its "I'm a Mormon" advertising campaign, and rebranded its media arm.
Yet the church is now suing Dehlin and at least three other podcasters, asserting it holds trademark control over "Mormon" because of decades of association with the term. The church accuses Dehlin of deliberately mimicking its visual identity, including its logo and color schemes, even after he made design changes to remove the logo's light rays and swap the navy blue font for orange.
Dehlin's legal response pulls at an obvious contradiction. "The LDS church does not own the word 'Mormon,' and it should not be allowed to use intellectual property law to control how people discuss Mormon culture, history, doctrine, or lived experience," he wrote in a statement posted to the Mormon Stories website. He argues the term belongs to the public domain, especially given the existence of over 400 different Mormon sects nationwide that trace their roots to founder Joseph Smith.
Patrick Mason, a scholar of the Latter-day Saint movement at Claremont University, said the timing raises eyebrows. "The lawsuit is part of an extension of the church's policies to emphasize the move away from the nicknames Mormon and Mormonism," Mason explained. "But why now and not five or eight years ago is curious."
The timing reveals a deeper strategy, Mason suggested. The church leadership views the term "Mormon" as undermining its claims to Christian orthodoxy. By dropping the name, church officials hope to distance themselves from the broader cultural associations attached to Mormonism, particularly polygamist fundamentalist groups featured prominently in recent television documentaries and streaming content. "The church really wants to distinguish itself and stand out from those other groups, who are called Mormon as well," Mason said.
Dehlin, a Brigham Young University graduate, was excommunicated in 2015 after he publicly disputed core church doctrines, including the divinity of Jesus Christ and the authenticity of foundational texts. Church leaders cited his statements that the Book of Mormon was "fraudulent and works of fiction." Dehlin has maintained his support for same-sex marriage and women's equality also factored into the decision, though the church disputes this claim.
Internal church documents leaked in 2017 revealed Dehlin appeared on a list of people the church considered to be "leading people away from the gospel." The church maintains a pattern of suing former members while largely avoiding litigation with active members, a distinction that critics argue reveals the legal action's true purpose.
Dehlin's counter-claim invokes the First Amendment, noting that hundreds of organizations, churches, businesses, websites, and commentators use "Mormon" descriptively. He contends no single entity owns the rights to terms like Christian, Catholic, Jewish, or Muslim, and the same principle should apply here. The church's effort to control the terminology, he argues, sets a troubling precedent for intellectual property claims against speech.
The church has attempted to shed the "Mormon" label before. Previous campaigns in 1982, 2001, and 2011 failed to take root, partly because cultural markers like the Book of Mormon and the Mormon Trail remained embedded in public consciousness. This latest legal offensive suggests the church views rebranding as a mission requiring more aggressive enforcement.
Author James Rodriguez: "The church is suing to erase a name it built its identity around for two centuries, then demanding everyone else stop using it. The irony is so thick you could podcast about it."
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