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
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
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…
Supreme Court to decide if tech companies can censor what you post on the internet
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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…
Catholic church, school lawsuits against Michigan civil rights law thrown out
FILE: Students at Sacred Heart Academy in Grand Rapids on Monday, Sept. 14, 2020. (Cory Morse | MLive.com) Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act is not violating the rights of a Catholic church and school in the state, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. St. Joseph Catholic Church in St. Johns and…
Catholic church, school lawsuits against Michigan civil rights law thrown out
FILE: Students at Sacred Heart Academy in Grand Rapids on Monday, Sept. 14, 2020. (Cory Morse | MLive.com) Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act is not violating the rights of a Catholic church and school in the state, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. St. Joseph Catholic Church in St. Johns and…
Atheist and agnostic fired for not attending company prayers win $50K in suit
Website of Aurora Pro Services. Screen grab (RNS) — A North Carolina home repair company that advertises as “Grandmother Approved” has agreed to pay $50,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by two employees who were fired for refusing to participate in daily Christian prayers. The lawsuit , brought by the…
Houston volunteer found not guilty for feeding the homeless. Now he’s suing the city.
A social justice volunteer in Houston has filed a federal lawsuit against the city, arguing a law banning sharing food with people outdoors violates his freedom of expression and freedom of religion. On Friday, a jury found Food Not Bombs volunteer Phillip Picone, 66, not guilty of breaking the law…
Oklahoma parents begin legal fight against first publicly-funded Catholic school in the US
A long-expected lawsuit has arrived to fight the creation of the country’s first religious charter school . The case, filed Monday in Oklahoma County District Court, kicks off likely years of litigation to examine the possibility of publicly funded religious schools, starting with St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School.…
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
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
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
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…
Florida City Undeterred in Legal Fight vs. Atheists: America Has ‘Long History’ of ‘Government Participating With Religious Communities’
Photo by Jack Sharp on Unsplash An attorney with First Liberty Institute, a conservative legal firm, addressed the Supreme Court’s recent decision to decline to hear a case brought by the city of Ocala, Florida, predicting atheists will ultimately lose in the ongoing legal feud. Listen to the latest episode…
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…
ACLJ Files Amicus Brief at the Supreme Court To Defend Your Right To Attend Church
Most Americans take for granted the ability to attend church on Sunday. In fact, even those whose employers are open seven days a week are still often able to attend church through religious accommodation granted by the employer. Federal law protects employees’ rights to religious accommodation to attend worship services.…
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…
Appeals court rejects Christian therapist’s lawsuit against Wash. state over ‘conversion therapy’ ban
Unsplash/Ben White An appeals court has declined to rehear an appeal in the case of a Christian therapist suing Washington state over its ban on therapy for minors experiencing unwanted same-sex attraction. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit voted on Monday to deny a full court…
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
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…
We tracked religious freedom in states. Bright-red Texas didn’t rank as high as you’d think
Editorials and other Opinion content offer perspectives on issues important to our community and are independent from the work of our newsroom reporters. A federal judge in Texas has ruled that a group of Christian business owners and employees need not pay for a medication prescribed to prevent HIV infection…
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…