Religion & Law

Lawsuit Charges Anti-Muslim Discrimination In Naturalization Approvals

Posted on June 17, 2010
The ACLU of Southern California yesterday announced that it has filed a lawsuit against the Citizenship and Immigration Service alleging that the naturalization application of a 50-year old Egyptian Muslim man was wrongfully denied. It claims that USCIS's action in the case of Tarek Hamdi is part of a broader pattern of discrimination against Muslims who are seeking citizenship...

In Israel, Demonstrators Back Dissident Haredi Parents Defying High Court

Posted on June 17, 2010
On Tuesday, according to the Jerusalem Post, Israel's High Court ruled that a group of parents of the Slonim Hasidic sect will be imprisoned for two weeks for contempt if they do not obey the court's previous order (background) to send their girls back to a school where they study together Sephardi students...

President Announces Religious Freedom Appointees

Posted on June 16, 2010
President Obama yesterday announced his intent to appoint Suzan Johnson Cook to the vacant position of Ambassador-At-Large for International Religious Freedom. Dr. Cook is the Founder and President of Wisdom Worldwide Center, and has also served as the Senior Pastor of Bronx Christian Fellowship Baptist Church in New York City since 1996...

Norwegian Judges Can Wear Religious Clothing

Posted on June 16, 2010
Norway's National Court Administration ruled yesterday that judges and other court officials can wear religious dress during court sessions. This includes the Muslim hijab (headscarf) and the national costume of the indigenous Sami people. Europe News reports that the ruling departs from an initial proposal that would have banned all religious clothing...

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Religious Liberty Legal Scholar Named President of Catholic University

Posted on June 16, 2010
Catholic University announced yesterday that Boston College Law School Dean John H. Garvey has been selected as Catholic University's next president. Garvey is a leading scholar on religious liberty and church-state issues. Among his publications are a casebook titled Religion and the Constitution, co-authored with Michael McConnell and Thomas Berg, and over a dozen articles on religious liberty and Establishment Clause issues...

Australian Court Expands Asset Freeze In Suit By Donors To Fraudulent Religious Group

Posted on June 16, 2010
In the Australian city of Adelaide, a district court has expanded a freeze on the assets of three leaders of Agape Ministries. ABC News reports that the court has frozen all the assets in Australia of Agape's leaders, Rocco Leo, and Joseph and Marieantoinette Veneziano...

Religious Billboards Said To Violate Highway Beautification Act

Posted on June 16, 2010
Last Saturday's Bowling Green, Kentucky Daily News reports on the lawsuit originally filed in 2008 by the Kentucky Department of Transportation against farmer Jimmy Harston over billboards with religious messages that Harston has erected on private property next to Interstate 65...

Greece May Drop Religious Oath Requirements

Posted on June 15, 2010
Under pressure from the European Union, Greece's Justice Ministry is drafting a new law that will do away with required religious oaths for members of Parliament, witnesses at trials, soldiers and various public officials. Kathimerini reported yesterday that the Church of Greece has dropped its opposition to the change...

Appeal In Sale of Historic African-American Synagogue Argued

Posted on June 15, 2010
Today's Wall Street Journal reports that oral arguments were heard earlier this month by a New York state appellate court in a challenge to the sale of a Harlem townhouse that for over 40 years was home to a historic Black Hebrew congregation. The New York City congregation, known as Commandment Keepers Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of Truth, is considered the oldest African-American synagogue in the United States...

Appeal Filed In Nampa Classical Academy Case

Posted on June 15, 2010
Yesterday a Notice of Appeal was filed in Nampa Classical Academy v. Goesling, appealing an Idaho federal district court's denial of a preliminary injunction to the 9th Circuit. In the case, the trial court rejected a challenge by a state-funded charter school to a state policy that barred its use of the Bible, the Koran and other sectarian books as primary source teaching material...

Egypt Drafting New Mariage Law After Court Upsets Coptic Church Rules

Posted on June 15, 2010
Egypt's Justice Ministry yesterday announced that a 30-person committee has been appointed to draft a new marriage and divorce law to cover the country's minority non-Muslim religious groups. AP reports that the move responds to anger from Egypt's Coptic Christian Church over a Supreme Administrative Court decision last month holding that divorced Copts have a right to remarry in the Church even when that violates Church law...

Churches Help Out Cash-Strapped Public Schools; Get Access To Families

Posted on June 15, 2010
Yesterday's Wall Street Journal reports that as public schools experience increased budget cuts, they are looking for private sector partnerships. In some places, churches have stepped in to become those partners. When Lakeland, Florida's Combee Elementary School had its budget for essential supplies cut by a third, a local Baptist church "adopted" the school...

New York Mets Sued By Kosher Food Vendor Over Sabbath Operations

Posted on June 14, 2010
A lawsuit was filed last week against the New York Mets by Kosher Sports, Inc., a kosher food vendor that sells hot dogs, hamburgers, knishes, beer and other food from three portable stands at Citi Field. According to yesterday's New York Post, Kosher Sports claims it has approval from Star-K, its kosher certifying agency, to sell food at baseball games on Friday nights and Saturday afternoons, the Jewish Sabbath...

Gangs Using Rosaries As Identifiers

Posted on June 14, 2010
While the recent case of a Schenectady, New York school principal who invoked the school's anti-gang paraphernalia ban to suspended a 13-year old student for wearing a rosary outside of his shirt has led to widespread criticism of school authorities, it turns out the principal may have been onto something...

Recent Articles of Interest

Posted on June 14, 2010
From SSRN: Ed Morgan, The UN's Book of Judges, (Global Governance, Vol. 16, No. 2, p. 160, April-June 2010). David E. Guinn, Religion, Law and Violence: The State's Efforts at Taming the Beast, (Blackwell Companion To Religion and Violence, Andrew R. Murphy, ed...

Israel's High Court Voids Special Payments To Married Yeshiva Students

Posted on June 14, 2010
Israel's Supreme Court today struck down a provision in the country's Minimum Income Guarantee Law that assures special financial benefits for married kollel yeshiva students but does not give comparable stipends to students studying in secular institutions...

Rehearing Petition Filed In Challenge To Prayer and Presidential Oath At Inauguration

Posted on June 13, 2010
Last week, Michael Newdow filed a Petition for Panel Rehearing or Rehearing En Banc with the D.C. Circuit in Newdow v. Roberts, an Establishment Clause challenge to prayer and use of "so help me God" in the oath at Presidential inauguration ceremonies...

European Court Holds Russia Violated ECHR In Dissolving Moscow Jehovah's Witnesses

Posted on June 13, 2010
In Jehovah's Witnesses of Moscow v. Russia, (ECHR, June 10, 2010), the European Court of Human Rights held that an order by a Russian court dissolving the Moscow branch of the Jehovah's Witnesses and placing a permanent ban on its activities violates Article 9 (freedom of thought, conscience and religion) of the European Convention on Human Rights read in light of Article 11 (freedom of assembly and association)...

Newly Released Kagan Memos Show Her Involvement In Religious Freedom Issues

Posted on June 13, 2010
Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's views on religious freedom issues may have been fleshed out a bit in the release yesterday by the Clinton Library of 74 boxes of files (some 43,000 pages) of documents relating to Kagan's service from 1995-1999 with the White House in Domestic Policy positions...

Hawaii Governor Talks With Rabbis In Deciding On Civil Union Bill

Posted on June 13, 2010
AP reported yesterday that Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle, who is Jewish and is a Republican, has recently met with two rabbis as she is considering whether to sign or veto HB 444, a bill passed by the Hawaii legislature that allows civil unions for same-sex as well as opposite-sex couples...

Court Says Reasonableness of Religious Accommodation Is Jury Issue

Posted on June 13, 2010
In Haliye v. Celestica Corp., (D MN, June 10, 2010), Muslim plaintiffs sued their former employer and a temporary employment agency under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act claiming that defendants discriminated against them on the basis of their religion and failed to accommodate their religious duty to pray five times each day...

Recent Prisoner Free Exercise Cases

Posted on June 13, 2010
In Hodgson v. Fabian, (8th Cir., June 7, 2010), the 8th Circuit rejected a Wiccan inmate's challenges under RLUIPA and the First Amendment to limits on his keeping prayer oil in his cell and limits on the herbs he can purchase and on smudging and incense burning inside...

Court Upholds Limit On Leafleting By Christian Group At Arab Festival

Posted on June 11, 2010
In Saieg v. Haddad, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56331 (ED MI, June 7, 2010), a Michigan federal district court upheld as a valid "time, place and manner regulation" a requirement that any literature distribution at the annual Dearborn, Michigan Arab International Festival must take place from a booth in the vendor area...

Excusing Potential Jurors With Religious Holiday Conflict Is OK'd

Posted on June 11, 2010
In State of New Jersey v. Banks, (NJ App., June 9, 2010), the defendant appealed his murder conviction, challenging the trial judge's exclusion of three prospective jurors who said they could not attend the trial on one of the days it was scheduled because of their observance of Yom Kippur...

Geert Wilders' Party Makes Strong Showing In Dutch Elections

Posted on June 11, 2010
Yesterday's New York Times and the London's Financial Times report that Parliamentary elections in the Netherlands on Wednesday resulted in a surprisingly strong showing for the anti-immigration Freedom Party of Geert Wilders. The party, coming in third, won 16% of the vote and captured 24 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives, the main chamber of Parliament...

Court Rejects Landowner's RLUIPA Challenge To Mixed Use Zoning Ordinance

Posted on June 11, 2010
In Dixon v. Town of Coats, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56740 (ED NC, June 9, 2010), a North Carolina federal district court rejected a RLUIPA challenge as well as federal and state constitutional challenges to a zoning ordinance that excluded religious assemblies from a six-block Mixed Use Village in downtown Coats, North Carolina...

Ecclesiastical Abstention Doctrine Bars Court From Deciding Governance Dispute

Posted on June 11, 2010
In Rentz v. Werner, (WA App., June 7, 2010), a Washington state appellate court held that the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine precludes the court from adjudicating a dispute between former members of the Aquarian Foundation, a spiritualist church headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and the church?s current minister...

Judge, Wife of Tony Blair, Cleared Over Sentencing Comments

Posted on June 11, 2010
UK Press Association yesterday reported that Britain's Office for Judicial Complaints cleared Cherie Blair, wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, of charges of judicial misconduct. (OJC Statement, 6/10). Blair sits as a part-time judge at Inner London Crown Court, using her maiden name, Cherie Booth...

Pope's Homily Ending Year For Priests Addresses Abuse Scandal, Catholic Theology

Posted on June 11, 2010
AP reports that Pope Benedict XVI delivered a homily this morning (full text) at a Mass in St. Peter's Square, concelebrated by 15,000 priests, to mark the end of the Vatican's Year for Priests. The Pope directly addressed the Church's sex abuse scandal, saying:It was to be expected that this new radiance of the priesthood would not be pleasing to the "enemy"; he would have rather preferred to see it disappear, so that God would ultimately be driven out of the world...

Lawsuit Challenges Health Care Reform As Infringement of Religious Beliefs

Posted on June 10, 2010
Yesterday, the American Center for Law & Justice, on behalf of five plaintiffs, filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate imposed by the recently enacted health care reform legislation. (Press release.) In addition to claiming that this portion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act exceeds Congress' power under the Commerce Clause, the lawsuit alleges that the new law violates the rights of three of the plaintiffs under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act...

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