Wisconsin Supreme Court rules against tax exemption for Catholic charities

Wisconsin Supreme Court rules against tax exemption for Catholic charities

Click here to view original article www.courthousenews.com MADISON, Wis. (CN ) — The Wisconsin Supreme Court decided on Thursday that a group of nonprofit organizations affiliated with a Catholic diocese are not exempt from paying the state unemployment insurance tax. In a 4-3 decision split along ideological lines, the court’s…

California’s Sweeping Climate Disclosure Laws Facing Court Challenge, But That Doesn’t Mean You Can Disregard Them

California’s Sweeping Climate Disclosure Laws Facing Court Challenge, But That Doesn’t Mean You Can Disregard Them

Click here to view original article www.corporatecomplianceinsights.com Sweeping climate change disclosure laws recently enacted by California Gov. Gavin Newsom may never take effect if business groups prevail in a new federal lawsuit challenging the legislation. But absent an injunction, the law remains in effect, which means thousands of companies are…

Opinion | Alabama’s church-state merger and hell rides with it

Opinion | Alabama’s church-state merger and hell rides with it

Click here to view original article www.alreporter.com The recent ruling by the Alabama Supreme Court, which classifies frozen embryos as children under state law, is not merely a legal precedent; it is a societal earthquake that shakes the very foundations of in vitro fertilization (IVF) treatments and, more broadly, personal…

Balancing blasphemy

Balancing blasphemy

Click here to view original article paisano-online.com Storm Goodman The boundaries between religious freedom, the separation of church and state and the principles of public institutions have been debated for years. In the United States, the First Amendment assures the free exercise of any religion, yet it also prohibits the…

Fort Worth faces legal battle over censorship claims by atheist organization

Fort Worth faces legal battle over censorship claims by atheist organization

The Metroplex Atheists group hung "In No God We Trust" banners on Fort Worth, Texas, lampposts in July 2019. Photo via Atheists.org (RNS) — Metroplex Atheists, a Texas-based nonprofit advocating for the separation of church and state, filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Fort Worth, Texas, after being…

Michigan Court Rules State Prisons Must Recognize ‘Explicitly Racist’ White Supremacist Group a Real Religion

A federal court has decided that Christian Identity be recognized as an official religion in the Michigan state prison system. Lawyers for two inmates in the Michigan Department of Corrections successfully argued that their clients’ religious beliefs should be welcomed like other faith philosophies, despite organizations like the Anti-Defamation League…

Barring humanists from RE committees is discriminatory, court rules

Barring humanists from RE committees is discriminatory, court rules

Local advisory committees on religious education may not exclude humanists, the High Court has found. In a landmark ruling on Friday, the High Court determined that Kent County Council acted unlawfully in barring a humanist from joining a Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education (SACRE) as a full member. Judge…

Supreme Court to hear arguments on workplace religious protections

Supreme Court to hear arguments on workplace religious protections

Republicans urge justices to interpret a law to better accommodate employees’ religious observance The Supreme Court building is seen at dusk in Washington in 2021. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) The Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday in a case that could expand religious protections for workers under a law changed…

Will SCOTUS Fall for Biden DOJ’s Flim-Flam in Sabbath-Observer Case? | Opinion

Will SCOTUS Fall for Biden DOJ’s Flim-Flam in Sabbath-Observer Case? | Opinion

The Biden administration’s Justice Department has submitted a brief to the Supreme Court that should be the subject of a false-labeling charge. An evangelical Christian postman lost his job because he would not deliver mail on Sunday. A federal appellate court ruled against his employment-discrimination claim because accommodating his religious…

Why the oath to the sovereign matters as a requirement of the practice of law

Why the oath to the sovereign matters as a requirement of the practice of law

Law Matters Law Opinion The loyalty being asked of us are to Canada’s organizing constitutional principles. Share: The requirement to take an oath of allegiance to the sovereign remains a requirement for being called to the Bar in some provinces, including Alberta. Does it violate deeply held religious beliefs? Can…

What a Quran Burning Reveals About Turkey’s Alliance With the West

What a Quran Burning Reveals About Turkey’s Alliance With the West

There is a Turkish proverb: When an idiot throws a stone into a well, forty wise men can’t pull it out. Well, that’s what an anti-Muslim activist succeeded in doing last Saturday when he burned a Quran outside the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. According to the perpetrator, Rasmus Paludan, the…

Justices decline to hear religious burden claim against Montgomery County

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal from Burtonsville landowners who claim Montgomery County illegally enforced a zoning requirement that prevented a Christian group from building a church on their land. Without comment, the justices let stand a lower court ruling that the county did not…

Vermont to Reimburse Families For Tuition To Private Religious Schools

Vermont to Reimburse Families For Tuition To Private Religious Schools

Unsplash photo by Element5 Digital. Vermont will now apply its tuition benefit program to families who choose to send their children to religious schools. In 1869, Vermont established its Town Tuition Program to provide vouchers to families so they could attend the school of their choice when living in a…

Montgomery County urges justices to deny religious burden claim

Montgomery County validly enforced a zoning requirement that two Burtonsville landowners claim prevented a Christian group from building a church on their land, the county stated Monday in urging the U.S. Supreme Court to deny the owners’ request that it hear their appeal. Burtonsville Associates and Burtonsville Crossing LLC allege…

Shuttered cannabis church takes fight to reopen to California Supreme Court

Shuttered cannabis church takes fight to reopen to California Supreme Court

Cannabis plants. Photo by Crystalweed Cannabis/Unsplash/Creative Commons (RNS) — A cannabis church in Southern California — which was shut down by the county of San Bernardino over accusations it was illegally functioning as a dispensary — is taking its fight to reopen to the state Supreme Court, arguing that it…