Religion Isn’t a Crime, Shen Yun’s Lawyers Say in Motion to Dismiss Lawsuit

Shen Yun-affiliated schools have the right to educate young artists in an environment of faith and morality, the company’s lawyers say.

Shen Yun performers gather onstage during a curtain call at the Paramount Theatre in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Oct. 24, 2021. Hu Chen/The Epoch Times

Shen Yun Performing Arts, a renowned classical Chinese dance company based in New York, is asking a court to dismiss a civil lawsuit brought by two former performers.

The statute of limitations has passed, and the plaintiffs have failed to allege any unlawful activity, lawyers for the company stated in a July 7 court filing, detailing several other deficiencies in the suit. If the suit were to succeed, it would outlaw common religious practices protected under the Constitution, the filing suggests.

“They are trying to turn everyday religious activity into a federal crime, and it’s just not,” said Justin Butterfield, an attorney for Shen Yun with the Texas-based law firm Butterfield & Patterson.

Shen Yun was founded by practitioners of Falun Gong in 2006 with a mission to revive traditional Chinese culture and raise awareness about the persecution of practitioners in communist China. The company has faced incessant harassment and sabotage attempts by the Chinese regime, including an FBI-thwarted plot to bribe an IRS official to open a probe on Shen Yun.

Over the past year, the company has also been targeted with more than 100 bomb and death threats, a dozen hit pieces by The New York Times, smears by inauthentic accounts on social media, and several lawsuits.

The civil lawsuit was filed in the federal court for the Southern District of New York in April by two individuals from New Zealand who formerly performed with Shen Yun. The plaintiffs alleged that performing with the company amounted to “forced labor” because they believed that if they left they would “go to hell.”

The Epoch Times previously spoke to dozens of current and former Shen Yun performers who squarely rejected such an interpretation of their company culture or faith.

“I’ve never, ever heard anyone say that if you leave, you would go to hell,” said William Li, a principal dancer and instructor.

“I know, actually, many artists who did leave, and they have since started businesses or they’re doing some other careers, and I keep in touch with them, and they’re doing well.”

Ying Chen, vice president of the company, called the suit “a misguided attempt to deprecate the pursuit of excellence and discard the freedom our country affords to religious communities to live according to their faith.”

“I would expect that religious schools and elite training academies across the country are watching this case very closely to see if the very foundations of their institutions—the core elements that define them and make them great—will be properly defended,” Chen said in a July 8 press release.

Even if the allegations were true, they wouldn’t be grounds for litigation, Butterfield said.

“It’s perfectly permissible” for a faith to admonish its believers about “spiritual consequences” of straying from its precepts, he said. “That is something that happens every day, hundreds of thousands of times a day in the United States, and it’s protected by the Constitution.”

Fearing “some sort of spiritual harm” can’t be considered the kind of serious threat of harm contemplated by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, he noted.

“The law is designed to prevent human trafficking, and it’s not designed to stop religious activity,” Butterfield said.

The suit also complains about the code of conduct required by Shen Yun and its affiliated schools, Fei Tian College and Fei Tian Academy of the Arts, that includes limits on students’ access to the internet and smartphones.

The defense filing said those allegations are a “twisted” re-framing of normal policies expected at a religious boarding school.

“Requiring adherence to a school’s religious beliefs (including its standards for moral conduct), restricting media consumption to that consistent with the school’s faith, and regulating interaction between the sexes are common policies in religious schools of many faiths,” it reads.

“The Constitution protects the right of a religious school to educate students according to its faith.”

The suit argues that Falun Gong isn’t a religion, chiefly because it hasn’t usually described itself as one.

But that is “irrelevant,” according to the defense filing.

“Whether a belief system is a religion under U.S. law is a question of function, not characterization,” the filing reads, noting that previous legal cases involving Falun Gong have already established it as such.

Shen Yun performers previously told The Epoch Times that they consider their art an extension of their faith, and believe that the show uplifts the audience spiritually and conveys Falun Gong’s core tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance.

“Presenting those ideas of truth and compassion and forbearance is how they share their religious convictions,” Butterfield said.

The plaintiffs acknowledge that they applied to attend the schools voluntarily and repeatedly—because they failed their initial auditions—for the purpose of eventually joining Shen Yun and furthering the faith they were brought up in, the filing says.

“The most that the Complaint reveals is that Plaintiffs were students who strove to be admitted to, and then to succeed in, an elite dance academy ... with their parents’ consent, hoping to advance to a very high standard of performance to further the practice of Falun Gong,” it said.

“They were simply boarding-school students pursuing a religious mission. They had phones (albeit not smartphones), iPods, internet access, and stipends. As would be expected for minors attending a boarding school, they had to obtain permission to leave campus, and Plaintiffs concede that permission was sometimes granted. And the Academy provided security, as is expected of a secondary school responsible for housing young students.”

Medical Treatment

The former dancers alleged that they suffered untreated injuries.

Shen Yun said in its press release that “both emergency and non-emergency medical treatment for any injuries, sickness, or mental health needs is always available to any dancers performing with Shen Yun.”

Butterfield said the allegations are unmoored from the suit’s legal claims. “None of them would violate federal law,” he said.

Research suggests that untreated injuries are common among professional and pre-professional dancers. In 2018, Canadian researchers published a paper showing that during one academic year at two dance schools, some 140 students self-reported more than 400 “substantial” injuries, but fewer than 70 were treated.

The Epoch Times previously interviewed at least half a dozen current and former Shen Yun dancers who suffered injuries of varying severity and had them treated. None said their peers or teachers ostracized them for it.

“In my experience and in light of the current research that looks at injuries in dancers/athletes, I actually believe Shen Yun performers are doing better at both reporting and treating injuries than the industry at large,” said Dr. Damon Noto, a specialist in rehabilitation and pain management for dancers and athletes who routinely treats the company’s artists.

It’s also a matter of common sense, Butterfield suggested.

“Shen Yun needs their dancers to be in good health, or else they won’t have a dance performance. And Shen Yun has been very good about making sure that there’s both regular and emergency medical treatment available where they go,” he said.

The filing questions why the former dancers took a decade after they stopped performing with Shen Yun to bring their claims. Despite allegedly having a bad experience at the company, both of them volunteered to promote the company’s shows and participated in other Falun Gong-related activities for years after leaving the company, it says.

The filing to request a dismissal also states that the statute of limitations for the plaintiffs’ legal claims has passed.

“They are suing over experiences common to religious boarding schools and elite dance academies around the country. The Court should dismiss their claims because they are time-barred and because they do not make out any violations of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (‘TVPRA’),” the filing reads.

“Ultimately, what they allege amounts to nothing more than rejection of their religious upbringing and their past dedication to spreading the message of Falun Gong.”