News

A federal court in Chicago has ruled a group of self-proclaimed orthodox Baha'i believers can keep calling themselves Baha'i despite a 1966 court decision that said an earlier breakaway group could not.

On Tuesday, the federal 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 1966 decision, which barred a splinter Baha'i group from using the same Baha'i label and sharing the Greatest Name, a sacred and trademarked symbol, does not apply to a modern offshoot known as the Orthodox Baha'i Faith.

Though the judges criticized the ruling from more than four decades ago as wrongfully trying to resolve an internal religious dispute, they determined it was a moot point since the 1966 defendants' denomination is now dissolved.