Malicious compliance is a term that describes the gray-zone of compliance where obedience to a rigid set of rules is technically correct but subversive in practice. In pushing norms, Trump is basically teaching a master class in this concept, sometimes going beyond the limits of the law, but in other cases, bending the law (or breaking it) to his will. But this post is not about Trump, even if his presidency has me thinking about this topic. It’s hard not to opine on the way laws really work vs. how we thought they worked in the current political climate. What the spirit of the law is (norms, societal expectations) vs. what the law actually is (which is also interpretable by the judicial system) is a tension that we’ve seen pushed to its breaking point repeatedly. The velociraptors continue to test the fence, and eventually they are going to get out.
But of course, Trump isn’t the only one who uses technicalities in this way. A more intriguing concept is how malicious compliance is used to follow rigid laws to the letter while violating the spirit of the law. For example, a child who is told to stop hitting his sister can instead use her own hand to hit her while mocking her, saying, “Why are you hitting yourself?” [1] That’s an example of malicious compliance within a family setting. If called on their behavior, the bully can say “But I didn’t hit her! She hit herself!”
Social groups that have rigid rule structures are ripe for exploitation by malicious compliers. It allows people to comply (and avoid getting in trouble) without openly breaking the overbearing rules. Here are the steps:
- A rule or command is imposed that some in the group see as rigid, unfair or shortsighted.
- A person complies exactly, avoiding punishment.
- The outcome highlights the flaw of the rule, the poor logic, or creates group dysfunction.
- The absurdity of the rule is exposed to all. Sometimes this exposure also exposes the folly of the authority figure.
- The one who exposed the rule (or the authority, by extension) can’t be held accountable because they complied with the letter of the law.
Malicious compliance thrives in systems where rules are enforced more than individual judgment. It performs three important roles for those living in oppressive systems:
- Resistance–it challenges power.
- Satire–it exposes hypocrisy.
- Self-protection–it minimizes the harm to those who are resisting.
Literature is full of characters who use malicious compliance to illustrate hypocrisy or the foolishness of those in power. Shylock insists on his legal right to a “pound of flesh” from Antonio, but is thwarted by Portia who clarifies that the flesh can be obtained but “not a drop of blood” which is not in the contract. Austen’s Lady Susan follows all the rules her strict Regency society requires, using them to screen her real intent to seduce married men, manipulate and control her daughter, and humiliate her rivals. She demonstrates that strict social rules that are supposed to create moral behavior can be bent to a very different purpose by someone clever. Kafka shows the impossibility of complying with the rigid rules in an opaque bureaucracy. Upon his arrest, Josef is unable to comply because nobody will explain the reasons for his arrest or what rules he has violated. In 1984, George Orwell shows characters who comply outwardly with the requirements of the regime without understanding or agreeing with the slogans and rallies they are forced to support.
Malicious compliance also highlights the absurdity of the rigid system of rules or the oppressive nature of the regime imposing them. These are also things that you can find throughout many churches. Here are a few from Catholicism:
- Fasting. Catholic rules dictated that no meat should be eaten on Fridays during Lent, but fish were allowed. Some monks declared beaver, capybara, muskrat and puffin to be “fish” so they would be permitted. Conversely, others ate elaborate seafood buffets of lobster and other maritime delicacies to technically comply with the fasting laws, while also rendering them null of spiritual meaning.
- Confession. Because all sins should be confessed to a priest, some would confess in hyper-literal detail to subvert the seriousness of the nature of sin (e.g. “I borrowed a pen and forgot to return it”) or would be deliberately vague to avoid self-incrimination. Additionally, one could refuse to provide details because the details are too salacious to speak aloud, implying that the prohibition on “dirty talk” is on par with the seriousness of sexual sin.
- Divorce. Annulment became a workaround for couples who wanted to divorce, finding technical grounds to declare the original marriage invalid because the church prohibited divorce.
- Poverty vows. While individual monks and nuns took vows of poverty, they still amassed (collectively) enormous stores of wealth and great institutional and governmental power.
So let’s switch to some examples of Mormons using malicious compliance to subvert the intent of the “rules” or to show the absurdity of them. Because Mormonism is a bureaucratic organization with a strong emphasis on measuring (and asking about) worthiness, which is compliance, it’s a great place to find malicious compliance. Here are a few examples I could think of off the cuff:
Tithing. I don’t personally think this is a loophole because of how the D&C actually defines tithing as paid on your “increase” which feels like an agriculture term that already needs to be translated to a modern economy, but there are those who pay on their gross, others who pay on their net, and yet others who deduct expenses from their net income and pay on the remainder. It’s certainly OK according to how one interprets the D&C “rule,” but there have been talks in GC that would interpret it differently. Because tithing paid directly to the Church Office Building (via stock transfer, for example) is not viewable to local bishops, I’m aware of a few local bishops who wanted to “audit” a local member for their compliance and were frustrated by their inability to do so. (Personal opinion, that’s exactly the sort of bishop who should not have access to anyone’s personal financial dealings with the church, and apparently the church agrees.) I’m also aware of others who didn’t pay directly to the church whose bishops “audited” their financial disclosures or disagreed with how they paid tithing, using these assumptions to harm those they didn’t like (e.g. threaten their employment at BYU by refusing to endorse). It’s a slippery slope when low level functionaries think their mission in life is to police the flock.
Word of Wisdom. There are many ways to “maliciously” comply with the Word of Wisdom. Are energy drinks somehow better than coffee or tea? Well, technically they are allowed while coffee and tea are not. Is coffee ice cream somehow forbidden despite not being a “hot drink”? What about hot chocolate? Is an iced coffee or an iced tea fine because it’s not a “hot drink”?
Sabbath Observance. I can think of several ways here. Some families, for example, when faced with a missing item for a family meal have sent the less observant family members to the store to buy the missing items. I had a bishop who said that when you are outside of your county, it doesn’t count. I always reinterpreted that to anything you do outside your zip code. You can also argue that avoiding work on the Sabbath should mean that the meal prep for a big family dinner should be avoided. Is it worse to go to a restaurant (family members don’t have to work) or to stay at home (mom especially bears a huge cooking burden)?
Missionary Tracking. Given that we had to report out the number of discussions, I can personally state that my ability to cover discussions in a random street contact in a way that was not only fast but possibly incomprehensible to the one receiving it, was nothing short of amazing. If you don’t want BS stats, don’t ask people to track dumb stuff.
Garments. There are many things that people have done to make garments work when they don’t really work, including rolling up the bottoms by the waistband or tucking in the cap sleeves, or wearing a “shade shirt” to make a shirt work (which is sheer madness if you ask me). I know of a few women who bought men’s garments because the legs are almost always shorter which makes zero sense given that men are on average taller than women.
Callings. You can accept a calling and simply not do anything, or do the barest of bare minimums in the role as a method of malicious compliance.
Even Jesus (potentially) used malicious compliance in two examples I can think of, to point out the lack of authority or the ridiculousness of the request. In one case he said that rendering to Caesar what belonged to Caesar (paying taxes to an oppressive regime) made sense to side-step the underlying question–whether he opposed Roman rule. And when asked if he had said he was King of the Jews (which would be treasonous), he answered “Thou hast said” which could be taken as a way to avoid directly agreeing with the statement.
Many here will be familiar with the Great Pants Rebellion of Orderville, UT from the late 19th century. Young people in the “united order” based community wanted pants that were more stylish than the gray pants issued by community leaders. The only way to get a replacement pair of pants was if your existing pair wore out. Kids began using grinding stones to wear out the seats of their pants in order to get the newer, stylish pants, creating a scandal because leaders had intended the old pants had to be worn out through hard work, not through deliberate sabotage. Wearing the seat of the pants out implied laziness, not industry. Eventually, community leaders relented and updated all the pants to the newer style. Malicious compliance worked!
- What examples of malicious compliance in the Church have you seen?
- Have you observed this in others or done it yourself?
- Can you think of examples where it resulted in actual changes to absurd or oppressive rules?
- Have you seen it backfire on anyone?
Discuss.
[1] I can’t be the only younger sibling this happened to, right?
Wheat & Tares 
My favorite example is the BYU student who was turned away from the testing center because she was wearing jeans in the middle of winter, so she went in the restroom, took them off, put her long coat back on, and was admitted because they assumed she was wearing a skirt underneath. https://universe.byu.edu/2002/12/11/testing-center-unique-to-byu/
My malicious compliance was, when being asked to give a sacrament meeting talk on “Follow the Prophet” a few years ago, to list everything the prophet had asked us to do in the previous 12 months. I reviewed General Conference talks and official First Presidency Statements to prepare.
My bishop in my ultraconservative ward wasn’t particularly happy when I read this list out loud over the pulpit, as it included things like “get vaccinated” and “mask up.”
There’s probably a dozen ways to maliciously (not sure I’d call it malicious, but perhaps technical compliance) comply with the law of chastity, including grinding fully clothed or only one person clothed. The old missionary white handbook used to prohibit two missionary companions sleeping in the same bed so sometimes when a zone was traveling overnight we’d sleep in the same bed with another persons companion. Full obedience: check!
My daughter is a size 0 and fairly tall. The only garments that she can wear are probably the equivalent of a 2 inch inseam. She wears shorts that are almost booty shorts – with garments. She’s not doing it to be malicious but she doesn’t seem to comprehend that garments for other women are extremely problematic. This might be more an example of extremely poor design than lack of obedience, but I occasionally see online reels of skinny young women bragging about about how they are garment compliant. Right.
Home Teaching back in the day was full of examples of malicious compliance. Fist bump at church and asking how they were doing counted. This might be a good example of something changing for the better because leaders saw what was happening. I see ministering trending the same way now.
Any time you attach a specific metric to a rule there will be some who try to avoid it. It’s probably human nature. At work, the CEO decided to mandate 3 days per week in the office, the other two at home, which seems reasonable. Some people came to the office for 5 minutes and then left but were technically compliant. Then the rule was 4 hours per day equaled a full day. Now it’s 7 hours per day and we get weekly reports and there’s a mathematical formula describing how to average attendance over 13 weeks. The alternative is letting front line managers use their judgement, but this results in inconsistency across teams. The alternative is extremely rigid rules.
Weren’t the rigid rule followers who Jesus railed against?
Our mission allowed us to listen to generic Christmas Music during the holidays. We stretched that rule alllll the way to the edges. We would also sometimes get up at midnight on p-days, do the scripture study that was required to be done before 7:30am, and then go back to sleep as long as we wanted. We had some days where we were not allowed to use our vehicle, the intention was that we’d be out tracting all day. On those days I liked to pick streets to tract that were several bus transfers away, so we’d spend half the day on the bus.
Weak
@Tim, you’re my hero! Love that!
The classic Les Miserables exposes malicious compliance in forms relevant to Mormonism. Like many in the church hierarchy, Javert dedicated his life to the letter of the law (hello David Bednar) while failing to recognize an individual’s ability to be redeemed. After Valjean saves Marius, Javert finally realizes the hypocrisy of a system based on absolute compliance and, unable to accept there is a better way, takes his own life. In so doing, he exposes the many flaws inherent in orthodoxy.
My tenure as a bishop revealed a plethora of silly malicious compliance tactics. Recommend interviews were particularly painful. It became tedious to hear the sometimes-rational arguments about the benefits of coffee, wine, masturbation, selective obedience, etc. I learned to just sign on the dotted line and not waste time.
Truth is many religions base promises of salvation on strict adherence to their own interpretations of eternal laws. Our challenge is to avoid the extremes and base our lives on genuine service and caring for our fellow man. I know this philosophy is not in vogue at present but one can hope.
I’m not sure that most of those Mormon examples are very examples of malicious compliance. They don’t seem to meet the definition of following a policy exactly in order to demonstrate how foolish it is.
Tithing: Paying less than your bishop thinks you should is only going to get him to think you’re not very righteous. The way to maliciously comply would be to turn in to the bishop one tenth of every plate of cookies that someone delivers to you.
WoW: Malicious compliance might include mentioning over the pulpit that you finally kicked your coffee habit by drinking 3 energy drinks per day. Or that you’re sober now, but you look forward to getting a cold so you can take some Nyquil. Or maybe provide Postem for the youth Christmas caroling activity.
Sabbath Observance: This is hard to actually be maliciously compliant, because there isn’t a clear policy to adhere to. There are a multitude of statements acknowledging that some people have to work on Sunday, and certain emergencies require shopping. Letting your house burn down on Sunday so you don’t trouble the fire department might be malicious, but it isn’t complying with anything.
I think I’ve mentioned it before, but I’d like to see priesthood leaders thrown out of RS and YW meetings, because the handbook now prohibits attending meetings that don’t align with gender assigned at birth without the approval of the Area Presidency.
Sorry for the double post but I thought of another fun one!
I used to work for a small regional utility service. One of my duties was to respond to service interruptions, often in remote areas. We were bought out by a PE firm, and one of the first things they did was implement a strict drug-testing policy. Any incident involving a vehicle required an immediate drug an alcohol test, and the driver couldn’t return to work or drive a company vehicle until the drug test came back negative (usually 1-3 days later.)
One winter afternoon a major storm hit and took out a large piece of infrastructure leaving thousands of people without service. Another technician and I headed to the site, I was driving. The site was in the mountains on a not-well-maintained stretch of dirt road through a few access fences. By the time we got there the road was covered in about 3 feet of snow. Just through the first gate a piece of broken fencepost that was completely invisible under the snow scratched against the side of the truck.
If I showed up at work the next day with this scratch unreported I would be fired, so this wasn’t so much malicious compliance as just regular compliance with a massive net negative impact on the business. I called my supervisor and let him know. I was not allowed to drive myself to the drug testing center, and we were not allowed on-site solo, so my supervisor had to come pick us both up, take to me to get drug tested, take me directly home (this took about 3 hours), then go back to the site (now it’s dark and still snowing) and head up to do the repairs. This was on a Thursday before a holiday weekend, so I was not allowed to return to work until the following Tuesday, and it snowed hard all weekend–the rest of the team didn’t get to go home much at all.
Like Toad, I am not sure “malicious” is the word we want here. Although when doing something that complies with the rules in ways that end up harming the rule maker is properly called malicious compliance, I am not sure that trying to survive in a church that has stupid arbitrary rules is quite the same. Wearing men’s garments bottoms because my husband’s are some 9 inches than shorter than mine that hit below my knee, well that doesn’t harm the church in anyway. Although sometimes I wished I could find a way for following the rules that comes back to bite the church, mostly I just wanted to survive in the culture. Yes, you had to sometimes bend or adjust the rules if you wanted acceptance in Mormon society. For example after years of noticing that I could pay attention better with a few diet Dr Pepper in my system, and having my psychology professors tell me I was ADHD, and just struggling to try to avoid the kinds of medication my ADHD children got put on, but still function in the world, I decided that the better choice between the things that help my ADHD was probably coffee. But I still felt guilty even thinking it. Then my believing husband bought me a coffee maker. Yup, he was sick of living with my ADHD. So, coffee is my ADHD medication. If it was a prescription with nasty side effects, I wouldn’t have to tell my bishop I am on it, and I don’t discuss with my bishop what the doc has me on for diabetes or high blood pressure, so why discuss what medication I am on for ADHD.
But when you start doing too many of this kind of defensive bending of obedience rules, you suddenly back up and say why am I even pretending that I believe and should obey this crap? Why am I carefully not telling the bishop something that he might not like, but I feel zero guilt over and honestly think is best for me. Then you reevaluate your belief system and notice that really, the rules are based on some pretty arbitrary stuff. If this was inspired by God, then God has the same prejudices, and even superstitions that were common in the 1800s US. Coffee and tea unhealthy? Well, before germ theory was popular, anything that caused people to boil water before drinking was healthy.
I have a non-Mormony example of malicious compliance and a general Mormony observation. Years ago, I worked for a large landscaping company where the majority of employees were Latino and the owner and management were white. It became clear to me that the owner felt a certain “way” about his employees. Apparently he felt that they were dilly-dallying around the shop too long before the they got going in the morning. (In reality, they were just getting ready for the day, and heaven forbid, socializing in the process). The owner made a rule that the crew leads had to come in at 6:45 (the day started at 7) and get everything ready to go – BEFORE clocking in for the day – so that when their crews arrived at 7 they could leave right away. He correctly predicted that no one would attempt to report him to the state for requiring unpaid labor. Instead, what happened was, the crew leads got together and decided they would show up at 6:45, get in their work trucks, start them up, and sit there doing nothing until for 15 minutes with the truck running. Then at 7, they would get out, load up their equipment ect. and start the day. It only took a few days of the owner watching dollar signs flying out of all those tailpipes, before he promptly changed this policy. It was glorious. Every time I think about this, I get goosebumps and “Solidarity Forever” plays in my head… Ok, not really, but you get the point.
From a Mormon/general Christian perspective, I would argue that nearly every strict sabbath day observer is engaging in malicious compliance. Afterall, for everything to come together for the perfect Mormon/Christian sabbath (the meal, the gas for your car, the nice clothes you are wearing, the reliable WiFi), a lot of people had to work a lot of crappy hours, probably at night with crappy pay, for a crappy employer, and yes, also on a Sunday. Further, if we oppose paid sick leave, paid vacation, paid maternity/paternity leave, or other forms of EQUITABLE REST (the true intent of the Sabbath and it’s only practical application in the modern world) either at the ballot box or by denying such things to one’s employees, while also insisting on an idyllic, privileged sabbath day – well, my that’s malicious compliance with an outsized emphasis on malicious.
Work-to-rule is a labor example. In a work-to -rule situation the workers perform their job precisely as described in their job descriptions and/or the labor contract in dispute. Most businesses rely on employees performing above and beyond. I take as my text public school teachers who are expected to write letters of recommendation, provide school supplies, assist in extracurricular activities, grading papers and examinations that are not in their job descriptions and for which they are uncompensated.
Paying tithing through stock transfer. Thanks for the tip. I have long resented the idea that local leaders can see how much you contributed in tithing and that they ask you to come in to review it every year with your whole family. I always decline to go to tithing settlement and haven’t been in over a decade. I’ll have to try doing a stock transfer.
For years I have paid tithing as 10% of whatever is left over after my wife and I have done finances. So if we saved $400 on the month, we give $40. In terms of our gross income, it amounts to less than 1% of that. I thank Rock Waterman and his wonderful blog post, “Are We Paying Too Much Tithing” for this reasoning. I also consider all forms of charitable giving as tithing. The church literally does not need tithing money at this point. It could operate quite comfortably on the returns from its investments.
I agree with the other commenters that malicious compliance involves something more than just adapting or not obeying the rules. To be malicious, the compliance needs to inflict unintended consequences on the rule giver. It needs to make things worse and make the rule giver regret imposing the rule in the first place.
Fortunately my experience with LDS leadership has largely been positive and contains few such examples. My LDS leaders and I have usually shared the same goals. They recognize this is a volunteer organization, that we’re all in the journey together and just muddling through. But I’ve got one amusing second-hand story. Again, I didn’t witness this. So, take it with a grain and enjoy it for what it’s worth.
When one particular adult was called to serve in his ward’s Young Men’s organization, he pushed back on the calling. He was specifically tasked with planning the coming high adventure activity for the ward’s 14-17-year-old boys. This activity historically involved camping or backpacking. But this candidate told the bishop that camping and backpacking just wasn’t his thing. He didn’t know how to do them. To him, “roughing it” mean staying at the Hilton hotel with only *one* piece of luggage. And “high adventure” meant jet skiing and wake surfing behind a ski boat. (He owned neither). The Bishop ignored his resistance and just asked him to make it work. So, the man did so. For high the high adventure activity that year he took the boys jet skiing and wake surfing over a long weekend. They stayed in a hotel near the lake. It was the best high adventure activity the boys had ever been on. Everyone had a great time. Everyone that is, except the Bishop when the he received the receipts. The receipts included the cost for the hotel stay and the jet ski and boat rentals. The man was promptly released from his new calling :-).