News from around the world. Curated by Mark McDowell. Posts do not constitute agreement or endorsement.
Notre Dame Law School via AP In the image from video provided by Notre Dame Law School, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Altio speaks at the Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Liberty Summit in Rome, on July 21, 2022. Conservative defenders of religious liberty are pushing a new version of an…
The South Florida activist had raised more than $14,000 as of Thursday evening to distribute “In God We Trust” signs to public schools across Texas. The catch? The phrase is in Arabic. The Arabic text is meant to invoke Islam and some Christians’ discomfort with that faith, Stevens said. He’s…
A trio of rulings, far from ‘regressive decision-making,’ promoted equality by liberating the First Amendment’s religious liberty protections. The Supreme Court’s latest momentous term delivered major victories for religious freedom. The ability to freely exercise one’s religious beliefs is one of the most essential rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution…
A former postal worker who has sued the U.S. Postal Service for forcing him to work on Sundays despite his religious beliefs has appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. First Liberty Institute, Baker Botts LLP, the Church State Council, and the Independence Law Center filed the appeal Tuesday on behalf…
Gerald Groff appears in an image provided to Law&Crime by his lawyers. A postal worker who asked for a religious accommodation to have every Sunday off is now asking the Supreme Court to review his case. Former postal worker Gerald E. Groff is an Evangelical Christian and Sunday Sabbath observer.…
Students at Loyola Academy, a Catholic school in Illinois, pray together after winning the 8A high school championship in 2015. Six weeks after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a praying football coach and clarified its stance on school prayer , a separate but related case came one step…
This lawsuit follows one filed in Leon County Circuit Court June by a South Florida Jewish congregation that also argues the new law, which provides no exceptions for rape and incest, violates rights to privacy and religion. | Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo By Matt Dixon 08/02/2022 01:22 PM EDT TALLAHASSEE, Fla.…
Clergy members of five religions sued the state of Florida on Monday over a new law criminalizing most abortions in the state after 15 weeks of pregnancy, saying the ban violates their religious freedom rights. The five separate lawsuits, filed in Miami-Dade County, claim the state’s ban curtails the clergy…
Ogboji In a majority decision of five in favour and two dissenting, the Supreme Court of Nigeria on Friday, June 17, in Abuja, affirmed the rights of female Muslim Students in Lagos state public primary and secondary schools to wear hijab. The seven-member panel of the Supreme Court affirmed the…
In its late-June flurry, the Supreme Court ballooned the Second Amendment, crippled the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to address climate change, and scrapped the constitutional right to abortion. These rulings — especially the chaos-inducing overruling of Roe v. Wade — have dominated the headlines. Meanwhile another seismic change to American…
Lansing — The Michigan Supreme Court on Thursday ruled Michigan’s current laws against discrimination based on sex includes a ban on discrimination based on sexual orientation, a ruling that effectively stops businesses from denying services, housing or employment opportunities to the gay community. The ruling also left intact a lower…
MADISON, Wis. (CN) — A Wisconsin federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit from a local church challenging a nearly 100-year-old provision in state law it says will cost the congregation their land for voting to leave a conference of Methodist churches. The Hebron Community Methodist Church of Fort Atkinson,…
KEY CASES Establishment Clause Maine Scholarship Program Excluding Sectarian Schools Unconstitutional In Carson v. Makin , 142 S.Ct. 1987 (2022), the U.S. Supreme Court struck a tuition assistance program that requires school districts to transmit payment to the secondary school — public or private, in-state or out-of-state — that parents…
Freedom Forum The Supreme Court, in striking down a unique tuition assistance program in Maine, could foreshadow the future of religious freedom under the First Amendment. THE CASE The very rural state of Maine is not able to provide a local public secondary school in every school district. To fill…
If you ask some Americans, the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling did more than overturn Roe v. Wade. They believe it also shrunk the distance between church and state. These more liberal religious freedom advocates fear the court has cleared the way for lawmakers to privilege conservative religious teachings on when…
U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, foreground, speaks to supporters at Wearhouse 25 during a party to kick off her re-election bid for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District seat, Tuesday, June 28, 2022, in Grand Junction, Colo. You can say I came out of the womb a Baptist preacher. In fact, I’m Baptist…
Bremerton assistant football coach Joe Kennedy, obscured at center in blue, is surrounded by Centralia High School football players as they kneel and pray with him on the field after their game on Oct. 16, 2015, in Bremerton, Washington. After losing his coaching job for refusing to stop kneeling in…
The Supreme Court recently ruled , 6-3, along party lines in favor of a public school football coach who lost his job after kneeling and praying on the field. The Bremerton School District, when it learned of the prayers, told former assistant coach Joseph Kennedy to stop as it could…
Toobin breaks down what Supreme Court opinion says about the right to religious freedom 01:46 Barbara A. Perry is Gerald L. Baliles Professor and Director of Presidential Studies at UVA’s Miller Center. She was a 1994-95 Supreme Court fellow and is the co-author of " Freedom and the Court: Civil…
Many states have amended their state fair employment practices laws by redefining various key terms that have previously been consistent across the United States. For example, states like Colorado, Illinois, Georgia, Maryland and Virginia have redefined “employment,” “citizenship status,” “harassment,” “sexual harassment,” and “religion,” among others, to protect a wider…
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overruled decades of precedent maintaining the separation of church and state in a case about a former high school football coach who was fired for engaging in visible, public prayers at the 50-yard line after every game. United States Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch…
Protesters and a counter protester get into a debate about abortion rights on Friday, June 24, 2022, at North Straub Park in St. Petersburg, Fla. The Supreme Court on Friday stripped away women’s constitutional protections for abortion, a fundamental and deeply personal change for Americans’ lives after nearly a half-century…
The New Reform Temple sits on the corner of Main Street and West Gregory Boulevard in Kansas City. Rabbi Alan Londy said the Supreme Court’s decision was an affront to religious freedom. After the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the nearly 50-year-old precedent of Roe v. Wade, the response among religious…
The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, June 15, 2022, in Washington. Manuel Balce Ceneta – staff, AP WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Maine can’t exclude religious schools from a program that offers tuition aid for private education, a decision that could ease religious organizations’ access to…
The US Supreme Court is seen behind a fence after overturning Roe v. Wade, in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2022. Yesterday’s shameful Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade was telegraphed months ago. But, during the angst-laden wait for the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe , the court, so…