to the church. Unification Church, law studies and California State Bar admission Greene joined the Unification Church in late 1974 in an attempt to convince his sister Catherine to renounce her membership in the organization. Unable to do so, he walked out in July 1975. From 1976 to 1978, he deprogrammed about 130 members of the Unification Church. The deprogrammer character in the film Ticket to Heaven was based on his work. Greene began studying law at the New College of California Law School in 1978. He was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1983. Additional successful litigation In Molko v. Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, Greene represented two former members of the Unification Church, David Molko and Tracy Leal, before the California Supreme Court. (Paul Morantz, in an amicus curiae on behalf of the Cult Awareness Network, also briefed and argued the case.) In 1988, the state high court held that religious organizations may be sued for fraud and intentional infliction of emotional distress when they use deception to cause candidates for recruitment to unwittingly expose themselves to brainwashing techniques. The members of the Unification Church who recruited Molko had lied by denying any religious connection to their recruitment pitch, and then when he trusted them, brainwashing him. In a legal opinion written by Justice Stanley Mosk regarding tactics religious groups use to attract followers, the court found that any burden on the free exercise of religion was outweighed by the state's interest in protecting against "fraudulent induction of unconsenting individuals into an atmosphere of coercive persuasion" because many people exposed to brainwashing techniques without their knowledge or consent would develop serious and sometimes irreversible physical and psychiatric disorders, up to and including schizophrenia, self-mutilation, and suicide. The defendants appealed to the United States Supreme Court which refused to review the decision of the California Supreme Court, and the case was settled out of court. In 1998, in Bertolucci v. Ananda Church of Self Realization, Greene won a US$1.625 million jury verdict for fraud, coercion and sexual exploitation of a woman devotee. Free speech activism From 2003 to 2005, Greene was involved in a controversy about a changeable "Freedom" sign with political messages on the side of his San Anselmo law office, facing eastbound traffic on busy Sir Francis Drake Blvd. Greene was vehement regarding his opposition to the policies of President George