News from around the world. Curated by Mark McDowell. Posts do not constitute agreement or endorsement.
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…
The 2021 National Day of Prayer: 2 Corinthians 3:17, "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." The 2021 National Day of Prayer: 2 Corinthians 3:17, "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there…
Erwin Chemerinsky. Photo by Jim Block. For the last two decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently restricted the ability to sue out-of-state defendants without their consent. But in Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District , the court allowed an out-of-state company to be sued. The decision, handed…
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…
In The Challenge of Pluralism , Stephen V. Monsma and J. Christopher Soper posed a question facing every democratic society: “How far can a democratic polity go in permitting religiously motivated behavior that is contrary to societal welfare and norms?” During the past year of the pandemic, states and local…
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…
Guest columnist I don’t ascribe to any particular religious denomination or theology. However, I respect that others do. I believe that faith is a private matter of conscience and definitely not the business of the government. Some of the greatest injustices throughout history have resulted from government either fostering or…
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…
I should not have to care whether my religious beliefs conflict with the majority of those in any branch of our government. The Constitution — as enumerated in Article VI Section 3 and the First Amendment — is supposed to guarantee that government should not care that for the first…
The U.S. Supreme Court is seen at sunset in Washington on Oct. 4, 2018. The Supreme Court is telling California that it can’t enforce coronavirus-related restrictions that have limited home-based religious worship including Bible studies and prayer meetings. The order from the court late Friday, April 9, 2021, is the…
I don’t ascribe to any particular religious denomination or theology. However, I respect that others do. I believe that faith is a private matter of conscience and definitely not the business of the government. Some of the greatest injustices throughout history have resulted from government either fostering or condemning religion.…
Gov. Newsom A religious liberty public interest law firm heaped praise on the Supreme Court’s controversial use of the “ shadow docket ” in a Wednesday amicus brief. The brief asks the justices to grant emergency relief by stopping the state of California from enforcing Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) COVID-19…
The U.S. Supreme Court is seen from the Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Thursday, February 4, 2021. The Supreme Court blocked California’s Covid-19 restrictions on religious gatherings in private homes in a late-night order on Friday, saying that the law infringes on constitutionally-protected religious rights in a 5-4 vote. The…
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…
Christian News The BGEA put adverts for the festival on local public buses. (Blackpool) Manchester County Court Judge Claire Evans ruled in favour of Franklin Graham and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) in the Lancashire Festival of Hope advertising campaign case. In 2018, the English city of Blackpool hosted…
A federal judge ruled Monday that Wayne State University violated the constitutional rights of a Christian student group that required its leaders to be Christians. InterVarsity Christian Fellowship had been active on the campus for 75 years before suing the school in 2018. The suit claimed Wayne State took away…
This past week I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Jim Oleske , a Professor of Law at Lewis & Clark. Professor Oleske is an expert on the First Amendment’s free exercise clause. A couple years ago, he wrote a prescient law view article that has made him something of…
Madhya Pradesh Government Notifies The Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2020 The Madhya Pradesh Government on Saturday (27th March) notified ‘The Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2020’ which provides for a prison term of up to 10 years for anyone found guilty of using marriage to force someone…
Madhya Pradesh Government Notifies The Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2020 The Madhya Pradesh Government on Saturday (27th March) notified ‘The Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2020’ which provides for a prison term of up to 10 years for anyone found guilty of using marriage to force someone…
Across the country, the Satanic Temple, an IRS-recognized atheist church with some 300,000 devotees, is waging a legal battle it says is for religious liberty, using tactics that have proved effective for Christian groups. The church, which preaches both empathy and the "freedom to offend," has filed at least seven…
This week we highlight cert petitions that ask the Supreme Court to consider, among other things, when religious groups are subject to state-law tort claims and whether a federal agency that enacted a new fishing regulation should have taken into account a pair of early 20th century agreements that preserved…