News from around the world. Curated by Mark McDowell. Posts do not constitute agreement or endorsement.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
PART 1 Who threatens the power structure so much and wields a strength so enormous that the enslavers who would enslave are willing to give up their most valuable asset just to shut them up? Read on. Throughout the ages, churches have been the pillars of community, places to go…
Louisville Metro will continue to enforce the Fairness Ordinance to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation, despite a federal judge’s preliminary ruling last week blocking punishment of a Christian photographer who says she will shoot only weddings between a man and a woman. Jefferson County Attorney Mike O’Connell said Tuesday…
Chelsey Nelson (Alliance Defending Freedom) A federal judge has decided that it’s OK for a photographer to refuse to work a same-sex wedding – despite the fact that nobody has ever asked her to do so. Chelsey Nelson, of Chelsey Nelson Photography, describes herself on her website as “a Louisville,…
Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota. Scott Olson / Getty Images MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota, August 14, 2020 ( Thomas More Society ) — The Thomas More Society filed a federal lawsuit against Minnesota Governor Tim Walz yesterday for his Executive Orders requiring face masks at religious worship services. The United States District…
Cornerstone Church in Alexandria (Minneapolis, MN) The Thomas More Society filed a federal lawsuit against Douglas County Attorney Chad Larson alongside Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on August 13, 2020, over Executive Orders requiring face masks at religious worship services. The United States District Court complaint is on behalf of three…
Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru, 140 S. Ct. 2049 (2020) Summary: The ministerial exception, grounded in First Amendment’s religion clauses, barred teachers’ employment discrimination claims where teachers educated their students in the Catholic faith and guided their students to live their lives in accordance with that faith. Read…
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – The First Amendment to…
A personal lawyer to President Donald Trump has been retained by high-profile pastor John MacArthur and his Grace Community Church in a COVID-19 fight with California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the City of Los Angeles. Grace Community Church has defied government health mandates that prohibit large gatherings to prevent the…
NEWS PROVIDED BY Thomas More Society LOS ANGELES, Aug. 5, 2020 / Christian Newswire / — The Thomas More Society announces that nationally renowned attorneys Jenna Ellis and Charles LiMandri will represent Pastor John MacArthur and Grace Community Church in Los Angeles, California, as Special Counsel. Grace Community Church, its…
On July 8, 2020, the United States Supreme Court in a 7-2 decision held that the “ministerial exemption” which prohibits courts from considering employment disputes of certain employees of religiously affiliated organizations, applied to two Catholic school lay teachers. Therefore, their claims of discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment…
Supreme Court of the United States (STOCK PHOTO) Friday, Chief Justice John Roberts angered conservatives when he ruled with the four liberal justices that the state of Nevada does have the power to limit Church attendees to just 50 in a 5 to 4 decision that was a serious blow…
A transgender man last week filed a lawsuit against a Catholic-run hospital in Maryland, citing in his complaint June’s landmark Supreme Court decision on transgender rights , fulfilling conservative fears that the ruling would usher in a legal war. The suit, filed on behalf of Jesse Hammons by the American…
Over at The Washington Post, Radley Balko has been continually updating a piece where he offers evidence that the “criminal justice system is racist.” Here are just a few of the examples Balko provides: A 2010 report by the Equal Justice Initiative documented cases in which courts upheld prosecutors’ dismissal…
Dangerous precedents are being set in a case before the Washington, D.C. Superior Court. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons July 20 (UPI) — Across the United States, a groundswell of alarm is rising among people of faith as judges increasingly disregard their First Amendment rights. Legal challenges to religious expression…
[co-author: Nathaniel Bernstein] Key Cases Courts Reach Mixed Conclusions on Challenges to COVID-19 Assembly Restrictions Nathan A. Adams IV Several recent cases concern challenges to executive orders relating to COVID-19 limiting the ability of churches to assemble and imposing other limitations. Beginning with appellate decisions, these cases are summarized in…
On July 8, 2020, in Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru , the United States Supreme Court reaffirmed its stance on the application of ministerial exception to employment discrimination cases as established in earlier rulings. In doing so, the Court simultaneously raised an unanswered issue under Title VII: does…
While coronavirus infections expand across the country, lawsuits challenging public health restrictions on in-person worship services continue to wind through courts. As I mentioned in an earlier post , even though the U.S. Supreme Court in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom recently upheld an order limiting in-person religious…
Copyright © 2020 Albuquerque Journal Legacy Church, 7201 Central NW, sued the state and Health Secretary Kathy Kunkel in April over a ban on large gatherings. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Albuquerque Journal) The state has the right to ban large gatherings in houses of worship during a public health crisis, such as the…