This week we highlight cert petitions that ask the Supreme Court to consider, among other things, when religious groups are subject to state-law tort claims and whether a federal agency that enacted a new fishing regulation should have taken into account a pair of early 20th century agreements that preserved certain rights of American Samoa. In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC , the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment protects religious groups from suits from ministers bringing claims of employment discrimination. Two petitions now ask the Supreme Court to decide how the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty interacts with state-law tort claims, such as defamation. In North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention Inc. v. McRaney , the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit allowed Rev. Will McRaney’s defamation and other claims against the Southern Baptist Convention to proceed because a civil court could resolve the case with neutral principles, without weighing in on issues of faith. By contrast, in Lippard v. Holleman , the Court of Appeals of North Carolina barred Kim and Barry Lippard’s defamation claim against the pastor and the music minister of Diamond Hill Baptist Church […]
