One object in this movement has been examined by a court in detail, and the judgment is short enough to read: the E-meter, the electrical resistance meter used in auditing.
The Food and Drug Administration seized more than a hundred of the devices, together with a quantity of accompanying literature, from the Founding Church in Washington in the early 1960s. It brought a condemnation action under the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act on the ground that the device was misbranded and inadequately labelled. The case took most of a decade to reach judgment. Judge Gerhard Gesell decided it on 30 July 1971.
The decision did two things at once, and neither side got what it had asked for. The government wanted the device condemned outright, secular and religious uses together. The court declined, holding that the First Amendment protected use of the device in religious counselling. But it also held that the accompanying literature made claims of a medical and scientific kind that were false and misleading, and it required any literature referring to the device or to auditing to carry a prominent notice stating that the device has no proven usefulness in the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of any disease.
That notice is the part worth dwelling on. It is not a finding about whether the movement is a religion, and it is not a finding about what auditing does for the people who undergo it. It is a narrower and more useful thing. A court, on evidence, decided what may and may not be claimed for a physical instrument, and left the religious use of that instrument alone.