Religion & Law

8th Circuit Hears Oral Arguments On Qualified Immunity In Suit By Christian Student Group

Posted on September 23, 2020
 The U.S. 8sth Circuit Court of Appeals yesterday heard oral arguments in Business Leaders in Christ v. University of Iowa. (Audio of full oral arguments.) In the case, an Iowa federal district court granted a permanent injunction to a Christian student group that was denied Registered Student Organization status...

Israel's High Court Says Disciplinary Panel Required For Municipal Rabbi's Comments

Posted on September 22, 2020
 A 3-judge panel of Israel's High Court of Justice ruled yesterday that the country's Chief Rabbinate must convene a disciplinary panel to try Safed's Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu. Jerusalem Post and Haaretz report on the decision. At issue are a number of statements by Eliyahu critical of Arabs and of the LGBTQ community...

Religion, Law and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg-- A Tribute

Posted on September 21, 2020
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's body will lie in repose at the Supreme Court on Wednesday and Thursday of this week (Supreme Court press release), and then will lie in state on Friday at the U.S. Capitol. (NBC News). The Supreme Court courtroom has been draped in black in accordance with Supreme Court custom...

Recent Articles of Interest

Posted on September 21, 2020
 From SSRN:Michael Conklin, Andrew Koppelman's Proposal: A Lose-Lose Solution for Religious Liberty and Gay Rights (August 2020).Nelson Tebbe & Micah Schwartzman, Re-upping Appeasement: Religious Freedom and Judicial Politics in the 2019 Term, Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No...

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EEOC Sues Over Failure To Accommodate Seventh Day Adventist

Posted on September 18, 2020
The EEOC announced this week that it has filed a Title VII lawsuit against Texas-based Frito-Lay, Inc. for failing to accommodate the religious needs of a Seventh Day Adventist employee working in Florida. The Commission explained:[A] West Palm Beach Frito-Lay warehouse employee applied for and received a promotion to route sales representative...

President Issues Rosh Hashanah Message

Posted on September 18, 2020
 Today the White House released a Presidential Message on Rosh Hashanah, 2020, which begins this evening. It reads in part:The First Lady and I wish our Jewish brothers and sisters Shana Tova and hope the millions observing this sacred day in America and around the world have a blessed start to the High Holy Days...

Ohio Law Bans COVID Orders That Close Houses of Worship

Posted on September 18, 2020
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine yesterday signed into law HB272 (full text) which prohibits any public official from issuing an order to close all places of worship in the state or in a geographic region of the state. The bill responds to actions in other states closing churches to prevent the spread of COVID-19...

EEOC Sues Over Health Care Company's Refusal To Accommodate Modest Dress Beliefs

Posted on September 17, 2020
The EEOC announced that it filed a religious discrimination suit Wednesday in a Texas federal district court against Wellpath, LLC, a provider of health care in correctional facilities. Describing the suit, the EEOC said in part:[A] nurse who is a practicing Apostolic Pentecostal Christian was hired by Wellpath to work in the GEO Central Texas Correctional Facility...

Consent Decree Allows Construction of Chabad House

Posted on September 17, 2020
 A consent decree was entered this week in United States v. Borough of  Woodcliff Lake, (D NJ, Sept. 15, 2020), ordering the Borough to grant zoning variances that will permit construction of a Chabad synagogue. The decree, citing RLUIPA, orders zoning approvals in accordance with a site plan approved in the settlement of a parallel private action...

12 Killed At U.N. Mission In Afghanistan After Demonstration Against Florida Qur'an Burning

Posted on April 01, 2011
According to CNN, at least 12 people were killed and 24 injured in Afghanistan's Mazar e-Sharif in an attack on a United Nations assistance mission building. The attack with knives and small arms followed a demonstration protesting a reported burning of a Qur'an last month by controversial Florida pastor Terry Jones...

8th Circuit: Title VII Does Not Require Saturdays Off For Postal Worker

Posted on April 01, 2011
In Harrell v. Donahue, (8th Cir., March 31, 2011), the 8th Circuit held that the U.S. Postal Service was not required to accommodate a Seventh Day Adventist letter carrier's request to have every Saturday off. The court ruled that the refusal to accommodate did not violate Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act because accommodation would have required violation of the Postal Service's collective bargaining agreement, or or its seniority system...

National Park Service Asked To Create Policy On Religious Displays

Posted on April 01, 2011
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a national non-profit alliance of local, state and federal scientists, law enforcement officers, and land managers, yesterday issued a press release complaining that the National Park Service has failed to create a policy regarding religious displays on federal park lands...

Native American Student Sues To Challenge Dress Code Barring Long Hair

Posted on April 01, 2011
The ACLU of Louisiana announced yesterday that it has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a Native American junior high school student challenging the Livingston Parish (LA) Dress Code after the student was suspended for wearing long hair in accordance with the cultural and religious traditions of the United Houma Nations tribe...

Suit Challenges Suspension of Student For Preaching, Bringing Bible To School

Posted on April 01, 2011
A lawsuit filed last week in a California federal district court charges that the Grossmont Union High School District infringed the constitutional rights of 16-year old Kenneth Dominguez when it told him he could not bring his Bible to school or preach at school...

Lawsuit Challenges Denial of Demolition Permit For Mormon Chapel To Be Built

Posted on April 01, 2011
The Albany (NY) Times Union yesterday reported that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is suing the city of Albany and its Planning Board in state court over their refusal to issue a permit so that the church can demolish a former Catholic school building in preparation for construction of a Mormon chapel...

Plaintiff Can Move Ahead On Some Claims Growing Out of Dispute Over Driver's License Photo

Posted on April 01, 2011
Islam v. City of Bridgeton, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32411 (D NJ, March 28, 2011), is a lawsuit growing out of a heated exchange between a Muslim woman (named Pamela Winrow Islam) and the manager of a branch office of the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission over the conditions under which Islam could have her drivers' license photo taken wearing a religious headscarf...

Suit In Lebanon Attacks Politician For Criticizing Veiled Muslim Women

Posted on March 31, 2011
Lebanon's Daily Star reports on a lawsuit that has been filed in Beirut against Wiam Wahhab, leader of the Tawhid Party, by 70 Lebanese and Saudi women for remarks Wahhab made about Muslim women's veils. In a television interview earlier this month, Wahhab described Saudi women as being made to wear ?black trash bags...

Anti-Abortion Group Challenges Library's Rules For Use of Meeting Rooms

Posted on March 31, 2011
An anti-abortion group, 40 Days for Life, filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against a Wisconsin public library that cancelled the group's scheduled showing in a library public meeting room of a film titled Blood Money.  The library claimed that the film would interfere with normal use of the library and therefore was in violation of the library's rules for use of meeting rooms...

New York Syrian Jewish Community Leader Pleads Guilty To Money Laundering

Posted on March 31, 2011
The U.S. Attorney's Office in Trenton, New Jersey announced on Monday that 89-year old Rabbi Saul Kassin, a leader of New York's Syrian Jewish community pleaded guilty to an Information (full text) charging him with operating an illegal money remitting business...

Court Agrees University Could Not Reasonably Accommodate Program Coordinator's Sabbath Needs

Posted on March 31, 2011
In Crider v. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, (ED TN, March 28, 2011), a Tennessee federal district court dismissed a case brought by a Seventh Day Adventist who claimed that the University of Tennessee failed to accommodate her religious beliefs that precluded her from performing any work from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday...

In Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program, Anti-Union Views Are Not Religious Beliefs

Posted on March 31, 2011
In Best Wood Judge Firewood and Tree Service v. U.S. Department of Transportation, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32405 (ED WI, March 25, 2011), a Wisconsin federal district court rejected a claim by the owner of a land clearing business that his free exercise rights were infringed when he was denied certification that would have made him eligible for a federally-funded Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program...

4th Circuit Upholds West Virginia's Vaccination Requirements Over Constitutional Challenges

Posted on March 30, 2011
In Workman v. Mingo County Board of Education, (4th Cir., March 22, 2011), the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld West Virginia's statute requiring vaccination for various diseases as a condition of attending school. The court rejected plaintiff's free exercise, equal protection  and substantive due process challenges to the requirement...

Muslim Center's Zoning Claims Move Ahead, But Individual Capacity Claims Dismissed

Posted on March 30, 2011
In Irshad Learning Center v. County of DuPage, (ND IL, March 28, 2011), an Illinois federal district court dismissed individual capacity claims against county officials, but permitted plaintiffs to move ahead with most of their other challenges to the denial of a conditional use permit to use their property for Muslim religious purposes and educational activities...

Muslim Brotherhood In Egypt Invites Copts To Join Its New Political Party

Posted on March 30, 2011
Al Masyr Al Youm today reports that Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie has invited Coptic Christians to join the Freedom and Justice Party-- the new political party which the Brotherhood plans to form. Badie says the new party will not preach religion...

10th Circuit Upholds Bald Eagle Protection Regulations Over RFRA Challenge

Posted on March 30, 2011
In a complicated opinion yesterday, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the current federal regulations that implement the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act against a claim that they infringe the religious freedom of adherents of Native American religions who are not members of federally recognized Indian tribes...

Senate Subcommittee Holds Hearing On Protecting Civil Rights of American Muslims

Posted on March 30, 2011
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights held a hearing yesterday on Protecting the Civil Rights of American Muslims. A webcast of the entire hearing as well as transcripts of statements made by the four witnesses and two committee members are all available on the Judiciary Committee's website...

Police In India Arrest 14 For Illegal Conversion To Christianity

Posted on March 30, 2011
Today's Hindustan Times reports that in the Indian state of Orissa yesterday, police arrested 14 individuals, mostly tribals, on charges that they converted illegally to Christianity.  They were charged with violating the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act 1967 which provides that no person shall "convert or attempt to convert, either directly or otherwise, any person from one religious faith to another by the use of force or by inducement or by any fraudulent means"...

Punitive Damage Claim Added In Chicago Priest Sexual Abuse Case Against Jesuits

Posted on March 29, 2011
In a previously filed clergy sexual abuse case against the Jesuit order in Chicago, plaintiffs yesterday filed a lengthy motion (full text) seeking to add a claim for punitive damages. Today's New York Times reports on the case which involves abuse committed by former priest Donald McGuire who is now serving a 25-year prison sentence...

Judge Backs Off Sentencing Defendants To Read Bible Study Workbook

Posted on March 29, 2011
In Houston, Texas, a new criminal court trial judge has run into a church-state controversy only a few months after taking office. KHOU News yesterday reported that Judge John Clinton offered defendants in his court an option to community service. They could read the book "The Heart of a Problem" and return to discuss it with him in a few months...

Former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore To Set Up Presidential Exploratory Committee

Posted on March 29, 2011
Former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore is planning to set up a presidential exploratory committee according to a report by CNN. The former judge was removed from office in 2003 for defying a federal court order to remove a large granite Ten Commandments monument that he had placed in Alabama's state courthouse...

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