Pastafarianism's legal history is not a single verdict; it is several states applying different tests to the same facts and reaching opposite conclusions, genuinely instructive about how law defines religion at all.
New Zealand went furthest. In December 2015 its Department of Internal Affairs approved the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as an organization authorized to solemnize legal marriages under section 10 of the Marriage Act 1955, and the first legally binding Pastafarian wedding followed in April 2016. The department's test asked only whether the organization was genuinely constituted and conducted ceremonies in good faith, a procedural bar the church cleared cleanly.
Austria and Massachusetts each allowed a colander in an official identification photograph for a narrower reason than religious recognition: Austria's licensing rule required only that the whole face remain visible, a criterion a colander does not violate, so the ruling never had to decide whether Pastafarianism was a religion at all.
Poland and the Netherlands asked the harder question directly, and both answered no. Poland never granted registration despite a 2014 procedural win, refusing again in 2016 and finally at its Supreme Administrative Court in 2018, on the ground the church exists to parody belief rather than profess it. The Dutch Council of State reasoned identically on 15 August 2018, denying law student Mienke de Wilde a colander exemption because Pastafarianism, in the court's words, lacks the "persuasiveness, seriousness, coherence and importance" the law requires. Both courts read the same founding letter and found its own admitted satirical intent disqualifying, the opposite inference from the one New Zealand's narrower test let it avoid.