News from around the world. Curated by Mark McDowell. Posts do not constitute agreement or endorsement.
Welcome to the Wednesday, June 16, Brew. Here’s what’s in store for you as you start your day: SCOTUS update: 46 opinions issued this term, 18 cases remain Local Roundup Federal Register update SCOTUS update: 46 opinions issued this term, 18 cases remain The U.S. Supreme Court is winding down…
Anticipating the Santa Maria Joint Union High School District’s pending assessment of its Columbus ship logo, I respond to recent commentary that asserted the logo is “fully fitting” for the district. The commentary is informative for evaluating the logo’s appropriateness, but not in the way its author intended. Consider two…
Churches in California are celebrating their victory for religious freedom after a religious freedom legal group secured settlements requiring the state to pay $2.1 million in attorneys’ fees to a Pentecostal church and a Catholic priest and to never again impose discriminatory restrictions on houses of worship. In an injunction…
Members of the Mount St. Joseph Academy Esports team Destiny Jurado, Jeremy Gillespie and Keith Dishaw Sinclair are pictured at the school in Rutland., Vt., Feb. 25, 2020. (CNS photo/Cori Fugere Urban, Vermont Catholic) A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the state of Vermont cannot refuse to fund…
Ezra Zaid speaks to reporters at the Petaling Shariah Subordinate Court in Shah Alam December 17, 2020. — Picture by Miera Zulyana KUALA LUMPUR, June 3 ― The High Court today asked both Mohd Ezra Mohd Zaid and the Selangor Islamic Religious Department (Jais) to attempt to settle on the…
Stephen Kiers/Shutterstock A federal appeals court on Wednesday ruled that the state of Vermont cannot refuse to fund tuition for religious institutions that would otherwise qualify for the funding. The June 2 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit changes a state no-aid policy that dates…
Wood Gavel A Texas judge who is Christian was banned by another judge from opening his courtroom proceedings with a prayer, thereby granting victory to the Freedom from Religion Foundation, a secular non-profit legal organization based in Wisconsin, a report said. The judge ruled in favor of the FRFF, an…
A federal judge has ruled against Montgomery County Judge Wayne Mack’s practice of opening his court with a prayer said by a member of a volunteer chaplain program. Southern District of Texas Judge Kenneth Hoyt on Friday deemed the prayers violated the Establishment Clause, which is the Constitutional provision prohibiting…
Association of Christian Schools International logo. The Association of Christian Schools International, a Colorado Springs-based organization founded in 1978 that aims to advance “excellence in Christian schools by enhancing the professional and personal development of Christian educators and providing vital support functions for Christian schools.” ACSI has over 2,200 member…
Some time ago, the IRS issued an Audit Techniques Guide on the taxation of lawsuits, awards, and settlements. As many tax practitioners can attest, there are a multitude of tax issues involving any one of these issues. In any event, and although the Audit Technique Guide (“Audit Guide”) is somewhat…
The Supreme Court of Canada Building on May 12, 2021 (Jolson Lim/iPolitics) In a 9-0 decision on Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that there is no underlying legal contract when someone joins a voluntary organization, even if that organization has a constitution and by-law, and, even if that…
COMMENTARY: A decision in the Sandra Pavez case in Chile will have broad implications for the protection of religious liberty globally. Cathedral of San Bernardo, Chile. (photo: Wikimedia Commons) Reconciling respect for Catholic teaching on sexuality with the demands of the LGBT movement is aided by a robust protection of…
Whether or not a religious belief is sincerely held by an applicant or employee is rarely at issue in most religious discrimination lawsuits. With both the EEOC and DFEH guidance requiring employers to accommodate an employee who has a sincerely held religious belief that prevents an employee from receiving any…
More than 159 million people voted in the 2020 federal election and 2021 Senate runoffs, giving Democrats “trifecta” leadership of the White House, Senate, and House. Since then, Republican-controlled state legislatures around the country have teed up hundreds of bills aimed at making it harder to vote. Proponents of these…
BOSTON, May 10, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — On behalf of New Life South Coast in New Bedford, Massachusetts, First Liberty Institute, the Massachusetts Family Institute, and the global law firm Jones Day, today filed a lawsuit against Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, New Bedford Mayor Jonathan Mitchell, and several other officials…
A conservative legal group filed a lawsuit Friday against the state over a policy not allowing clergy members to visit prison inmates due to COVID-19 concerns. The lawsuit, filed in Jefferson County by the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and attorneys for the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, takes aim at…
The writer is a legal adviser for the International Commission of Jurists. IT has been more than 10 years since Pakistan ratified the ICCPR and the Convention against Torture, and even longer since it became party to other core UN human rights treaties such as CEDAW and ICESCR. By becoming…
A common rallying cry of the right in America, to justify regressive morality laws, is often to say that "America was founded as a Christian country" with "Judeo-Christian values" while the common response from the left is to declare that the United States was founded as an explicitly secular country…
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Monday in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Rodriquez , as well as a related case brought by the Thomas More Law Center, which challenge a California policy requiring nonprofits to disclose the names of their anonymous donors. The policy was initially created by…
Published in NH Bar News (4/21/2021) In the past several years a number of religious accommodation cases have reached the U.S. Supreme Court, an interesting trend where the religious beliefs and rights of individuals and businesses conflict with other fundamental rights of employees, students, and even the public. The cases…
The Supreme Court’s current term is winding down , but there are still several cases to be decided – and, as with most terms, a controversy over church-state matters looms. Fulton vs. City of Philadelphia is among the cases still to be decided. It centers on a requirement that private…
A lawsuit filed in federal district court argues that a provision of the South Carolina state constitution that bars public funds from being used for the "direct benefit" of religious or other private educational institutions should be struck down because it was born out of racist and anti-Catholic animus. The…
Late last Friday, the Supreme Court, by a 5-4 vote, issued an emergency injunction blocking California’s Covid-based restrictions on in-home gatherings on the ground that, insofar as they interfere with religious practice, they violate the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. Reasonable minds will disagree on this new standard for free…
Whenever there is a change in federal administrations, employers must be aware of how various employment laws, rules and regulations will change. One hot topic in employment law, which has seen significant change in recent years, is religious discrimination and accommodation of religious beliefs in the workplace. This issue is…
How the Supreme Court found its faith and put ‘religious liberty’ on a winning streak April 13, 2021 8.38am EDT Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh have bolstered the conservative wing of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court’s current term is winding down , but there are…