U.S. government sues FLDS to end religious discrimination

Here's the report from yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune, by Nate Carlisle, "A Century in the Making, the Federal Government Goes to Trial Against Two Polygamous Towns."   Here's the lede: 

The U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit against Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., goes to trial Tuesday in Phoenix, and there are some specific things that Colorado City resident Margaret Cooke wants out of it. 

For one thing, she wants a judge to order Colorado City to allow parcels to subdivide the way other towns do.

The other thing Cooke wants goes to the heart of the lawsuit: She wants Hildale and Colorado City, collectively known as Short Creek, to hire municipal employees and police officers who are not members of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

"We then get our freedom from the bondage of the FLDS religion," Cooke said. "Basically, the whole government is FLDS and they want to keep us from living here peacefully." 

No one denies that the Short Creek municipal governments are filled with FLDS followers. The issue at the trial is what people have complained and argued about for a century: whether those municipal governments discriminate against people who do not follow the church and its imprisoned leader, FLDS President Warren Jeffs.

Neither Jeffs nor the church is a party in the case. Yet the trial will put the towns up against the one group that consistently defeats anything FLDS — juries.

 Prior blog posts about Short Creek and the FLDS are here, here and here.