News from around the world. Curated by Mark McDowell. Posts do not constitute agreement or endorsement.
Shaw Media file photos Caption Despite significant legal precedents and a widespread acceptance by historians, educators, public officials and civilians, congressional candidate Rick Laib doesn’t believe there’s a constitutional separation of church and state. The subject arose in a discussion with the Daily Herald after Laib — a Will County…
Andrew Wommack gives a tour of the campus of Charis Bible College in Woodland Park in this Gazette file photo. A U.S. Denver District Court judge denied Andrew Wommack Ministries’ request for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction to override Colorado’s 175-person limit on religious gatherings under COVID-19 restrictions.…
Bill Foster, left, and Rick Laib. Despite significant legal precedents and a widespread acceptance by historians, educators, public officials and civilians, congressional candidate Rick Laib doesn’t believe there’s a constitutional separation of church and state. The subject arose in a discussion with the Daily Herald after Laib — a Will…
Del. Danica A. Roem (D-Prince William), the nation’s first openly transgender state legislator, wore her trademark rainbow scarf as she ran for office for the first time in 2017. RICHMOND — A wedding photographer and a group of Christian ministries have filed separate lawsuits against a new Virginia law that…
Christian churches and other ministries, plus a Christian photographer, are suing the state of Virginia over a new law that forces them to violate their core beliefs regarding sex, marriage, and gender or pay exorbitant fines. The Virginia Values Act, which took effect July 1, added “sexual orientation” and “gender…
Vermont tax dollars may soon be going to faith-based elementary and secondary schools, if a case filed recently in federal district court succeeds. The case is styled Valente v. French. The lead plaintiffs are Mount Holly parents who send their son to the Roman Catholic Mount Saint Joseph Academy in…
Trending America was founded on the principle that people should be able to worship free of government interference. As any elementary school student knows (or should), that freedom–more than any other–is what motivated people to come to this New World. It was at the very heart of our founding. Yet…
Portrait of Justice Ginsburg by Simmie Knox We lost a champion of humanist values and liberal jurisprudence with the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 18. One of the most powerful women in US history, she changed fundamental laws before she ever put on the robe…
Gov. Ralph Northam at a press conference in March announces his stay-at-home executive order for all Virginians to slow the spread of COVID-19. The governor has issued nearly two dozen orders since March related to the novel coronavirus. A religious discrimination case brought by Madison County Christians against Virginia Gov.…
Closed for business If hard cases make bad law, emergencies make even worse law. Our case books are littered with awful judicial decisions authorizing presidents and governors to violate core constitutional rights in the name of coping with crises. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s decision to intern more than 100,000 Americans…
The Story: The U.S. Department of Education has issued the Religious Liberty and Free Inquiry Final Rule to “help ensure that public institutions uphold fundamental rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and that private institutions adhere to their stated institutional policies regarding freedom of speech, including…
Congress has mandated that the date of the signing of the Constitution, Sept. 17, 1787, be commemorated. Prior to COVID-19, schools, colleges, and communities would have public gatherings to celebrate Constitution Day. Similar celebrations are impossible this year, because COVID-19 has forced so many of our public institutions to operate…
Dane County health officials cannot prohibit private schools from holding in-person classes until the state Supreme Court makes a formal decision on the matter. In a 4-3 ruling Thursday, the court issued an injunction temporarily blocking a Dane County emergency health order that sharply limited in-person instruction and agreed to…
In July 2020, in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru , the Supreme Court “ made it easier for religiously affiliated employers to discriminate” by concluding, 7-2, that two Catholic school teachers were ministers, not teachers. That ruling opened the door for thousands of Catholic school teachers to lose…
Last week, a ruling out of the Seventh Circuit presented the latest example that this country is facing an increasingly theocratic judiciary seeking to expressly favor religion and religious citizens at the great expense of nonbelievers. To be clear, the case is only at the preliminary injunction stage, so the…
Since presidential candidate Joe Biden selected Sen. Kamala Harris as his running mate, some Catholics have rightly raised concerns about Harris’s hostility toward Catholicism and her animus for Catholics whose moral lives are informed by Church teaching. Coupled with Biden’s own antagonism toward Catholic moral theology, Harris’s nomination clouds rather…
Grace Community Church in Sun Valley has continued to hold Sunday services despite county and state health orders. On Tuesday, Aug. 25, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge denied a temporary restraining order sought by county officials to prohibit indoor services at the church. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los…
Grace Community Church in Sun Valley has continued to hold Sunday services despite county and state health orders. On Tuesday, Aug. 25, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge denied a temporary restraining order sought by county officials to prohibit indoor services at the church. (Photo by Dean Musgrove, Los…
San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone celebrates the feast of the Assumption on the steps of the city’s Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption Aug. 15, 2020. (CNS photo/Dennis Callahan, Archdiocese of San Francisco) Earlier this week, the Most Rev. Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, released a statement…
Louisiana’s governor should be required to seek legislative approval before extending a state of emergency beyond 30 days, an attorney for a conservative think tank argues. Under current law, the governor can declare or renew an emergency declaration by executive order, though a majority of either chamber of the Legislature…
The U.S. Supreme Court is seen in Washington July 2, 2020. Legal experts have noticed a pattern in how the court handled religious liberty cases in the last term. (CNS photo/Jonathan Ernst, Reuters) WASHINGTON — As part of what seems to be a new trend for the Supreme Court, it…
During the term it completed in July, the Supreme Court decided several important cases involving religious liberty and one that expanded legal protection for gay Americans. In the term that begins next month, the justices will hear a case that purportedly pits those two interests against each other. But the…
A musician plays his trumpet as pedestrians walk by on Royal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Thursday, July 9, 2020. An increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations at the time forced bars in the tourist-dependent city to shut down again just a month after they were allowed…
Gov. John Bel Edwards (The Center Square) – Louisiana’s governor should be required to seek legislative approval before extending a state of emergency beyond 30 days, an attorney for a conservative think tank argues. Under current law, the governor can declare or renew an emergency declaration by executive order, though…
Not even Notre Dame can escape the Republican National Convention following famed football coach Lou Holtz’s speech last week. There has been some coverage from The Observer about students’ reactions, but I want to focus on a particular aspect of the speech. The most controversial part of Holtz’s time on…