Religion & Law

University of South Carolina Settles Student Funding Litigation

Posted on June 25, 2008
A settlement has been reached in Christian Legal Society v. Sorenson, a case challenging the University of South Carolina's refusal to provide funding from student activity fees for recognized student religious groups. (See prior posting.) In Memorandum of Understanding signed June 20 (full text), USC agreed to revise University and student government policies to permit student religious groups to participate on an equal footing with other student groups in receipt of student funds...

Israeli Chief Military Rabbi Given Sensitive Task As To Kidnapped Soldiers

Posted on June 25, 2008
The Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, Brig. Gen. Avichai Ronski finds himself in the middle of a highly charged political situation. In July 2006, two IDF soldiers were kidnapped by Hizbullah in a cross-border raid from Lebanon. (Background.) Ever since, the fate of Sgt...

6th Circuit Reverses Dismissal of Campus Evangelist's Claims

Posted on June 24, 2008
In Gilles v. Garland, (6th Cir., June 18, 2008), the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the lower court's dismissal of claims by Christian evangelist James Gilles who was was denied permission to continue a speech at Ohio's Miami University campus...

U.S. Muslims Frustrated With Obama's Distance From Them

Posted on June 24, 2008
Today's New York Times reports that Muslim voters are disappointed at Barack Obama's hesitancy to reach out to Muslims. While Obama has spoken at churches and synagogues, he has not visited any mosques. He also asked Representative Keith Ellison, the country?s first Muslim congressman, to cancel a speech supporting him scheduled before the Iowa primary last December in a mosque in Cedar Rapids, Iowa...

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Israel High Court Refuses To Block Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade

Posted on June 24, 2008
Israel's High Court of Justice on Monday refused to block the gay pride parade scheduled to be held in Jerusalem on Thursday. YNet News reported yesterday that Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski had urged the court to ban the parade, saying: "Past experience shows that the parade greatly offends, deliberately and unnecessarily, the feelings of Jews, Muslims and Christians, who view its sheer existence, and the blatant manner in which it takes place, as a desecration of the holy city and of the values with which they were raised...

Consultant Sues Wisconsin Diocese After Pressure To Turn Over Confidential Data

Posted on June 24, 2008
Last Friday's Madison (WI) Capital Times reported on a lawsuit that was filed earlier this month in Dane County Circuit Court against the Catholic Diocese of Madison by Phoenix Fundraising Counsel of Madison. The lawsuit claims that the Diocese has failed to pay Phoenix $350,000 it owes for the firm's survey work in connection with a planned capital campaign to build a new cathedral...

Pew Forum Issues New Report On Religious Views of Americans

Posted on June 24, 2008
Today's New York Times reports on the Pew Forum's new U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. It finds that "most Americans have a non-dogmatic approach to faith. A majority of those who are affiliated with a religion, for instance, do not believe their religion is the only way to salvation...

Recent Prisoner Free Exercise Cases

Posted on June 24, 2008
In Meyer v. Wisconsin Department of Corrections, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 46639 (WD WI, June 13, 2008), a Wisconsin federal district court stayed a decision on whether a prisoner could proceed with a RUIPA claim while he supplements his complaint to identify his religion, the religious item he claims to have been denied, and its relationship to his religious practice...

Michigan Supreme Court Will Not Review Witness' Religious Rights In Being Sworn

Posted on June 24, 2008
The Michigan Supreme Court in Donkers v. Kovach, 2008 Mich. LEXIS 1182 (MI Sup. Ct., June 13, 2008), denied leave to appeal a decision upholding the right of a witness to refuse for religious reasons to raise her right hand when being sworn in. (See prior posting...

Odinists Win Right To Group Worship In Prison

Posted on June 23, 2008
In an interesting prisoner free-exercise decision, an Indiana federal district court has ruled that the Indiana Department of Correction's policy banning all group worship for Odinists violates RLUIPA. In Hummel v. Donahue, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47534 (SD IN, June 19, 2008), the court held that while the interest in maintaining safety and security is compelling, prison officials must do more than speculate that a religious practice will lead to problems...

Church Sites Important In Success of Federal Fugitive Surrender Program

Posted on June 23, 2008
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported yesterday that the success of Fugitive Safe Surrender programs is due in large part to the use of churches as surrender sites. Operated by the U.S. Marshals Service, the program "encourages persons wanted for non-violent felony or misdemeanor crimes to voluntarily surrender to the law in a faith-based or other neutral setting...

Wrongful Death Suit Over Death of Jehovahs' Witness Girl Dismissed

Posted on June 23, 2008
In Canada, the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench in Calgary has dismissed most of the claims in a wrongful death suit by the father of a Jehovah's Witness girl who died from lukemia in 2002. Canwest News Service reported Saturday on developments in the suit by Lawrence Hughes against the the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Canada and two lawyers who had represented his daughter Bethany...

Legal Maneuvering Goes On In Suits Involving FLDS Trust

Posted on June 23, 2008
Yesterday's Deseret News reports that legal maneuvering continues regarding the United Effort Plan Trust (UEP), the body holding real estate of the Fundamentalist LDS Church. In 2005, a Utah court took control of the trust from former FLDS leader Warren Jeffs, reformed it, and appointed a special trustee to oversee it...

Recently Available Scholarly Article of Interest

Posted on June 23, 2008
From SSRN:Lawrence McNamara, Catch the Fire Ministries v. Islamic Council of Victoria: Religious Vilification Laws in the Victorian Court of Appeal (30 March 2007).Patrick Parkinson, Religious Vilification, Anti-Discrimination Laws and Religious Minorities in Australia: The Freedom to Be Different, (Australian Law Journal, Vol...

Anti-Muslim Bias In Western Europe Explored

Posted on June 22, 2008
Writing in today's New York Times Magazine, Noah Feldman writes that in Western Europe, familiar arguments against immigrants "are mutating into an anti-Islamic bias that is becoming institutionalized in the continent?s otherwise ordinary politics." He suggests that: [E]ven after 60 years of introspection about the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust, Europeans are not convinced that culturally and religiously different immigrants should be treated as full members of their societies...

Grand Jury To Meet In FLDS Case; Jeff's Daughter May Testify

Posted on June 22, 2008
In Schleicher County, Texas tomorrow a grand jury will begin hearing testimony growing out of the state's raid earlier this year on the FLDS Ranch in Eldorado. Yesterday's Dallas News reports that searches on April 3 and 6 netted 1,000 boxes of evidence plus a number of DNA swabs from adult FLDS members...

9th Circuit Again Rejects Challenge To Cal State's Religious Studies Courses

Posted on June 22, 2008
In Lafreniere v. Board of Trustees of the California State University, (9th Cir., June 17, 2008), the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals summarily dismissed a claim that Cal State's use of taxpayer money to fund certain religious studies classes violates the Establishment Clause and California's False Claims Act...

Court Rejects Challenges To Permit Requirement For Homeless Shelter

Posted on June 22, 2008
In Family Life Church v. City of Elgin, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 47210 (ND IL, June 18, 2008), an Illinois federal district court rejected a series of challenges by Family Life Church to Elgin, Illinois requirement that it obtain a conditional use permit in order to operate a homeless shelter in its church building...

Court Says Virginia's RFRA Only Applies In Suit Against Government

Posted on June 22, 2008
In the widely followed litigation between eleven break-away congregations and the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, a state trial judge has ruled that Virginia's Religious Freedom Restoration Act is irrelevant to the case. In In Re: Multi-Circuit Episcopal Church Property Litigation, 2008 Va...

Ohio School Fires Controversial Science Teacher

Posted on June 21, 2008
On Friday, the Mount Vernon (OH) City School Board voted unanimously to fire controversial science teacher John Freshwater. (See prior posting.) AP reports that the vote came one day after a consulting firm released its report on Freshwater. The report (full text ) concludes that Freshwater taught creationism or intelligent design in class, told his class that anyone who is gay is a sinner, improperly used an electrostatic device to put a cross on the arm of a student, was excessively involved in the school's Fellowship of Christian Athletes and was insubordinate in failing to remove religious materials when ordered to do so by his principal...

Sheriff Tells Church Students That God Was Briefer Than the Ohio Revised Code

Posted on June 21, 2008
In Weston, Ohio, Wood County Sheriff Mark Wasylyshyn was invited to be guest speaker at the Church of Christ's Vacation Bible School. His talk, as reported by Friday's Bowling Green (OH) Sentinel-Tribune, raises interesting church-state questions. After talking to the children about safety, the sheriff (apparently in his official uniform) held up a paperback copy of the New Testament and a thick volume of the Ohio Revised Code, telling students that God had been able to do in 10 rules what the state code takes so many more pages to do...

Religious Discrimination Charged In Firing of Apartment Managers

Posted on June 21, 2008
A federal lawsuit charging religious discrimination was filed in Jacksonville, Florida on Friday by a husband and wife who were fired from their jobs as on-site apartment managers at a government-subsidized facility in Lake City (FL). Announcing the lawsuit, a release from Liberty Counsel said that the regional manager of the company that owns the apartments fired the couple because of a large piece of stained-glass artwork hanging on their office wall...

Canadian Committee Investigates Pakistan and Indonesia's Persecution of Ahmadis

Posted on June 21, 2008
In Canada last Tuesday, the country's House of Commons Sub-Committee on International Human Rights held a hearing on persecution of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community in Pakistan and Indonesia. According to a PRWeb story on Thursday, in both countries Muslim hard liners press for prosecution of Ahmadis on the ground that they wrongly refer to themselves as Muslims...

Danish Appeals Court Upholds Dismissal of Muslim Lawsuit Against Newspaper

Posted on June 21, 2008
Last Thursday, an appeals court in Denmark affirmed a lower court's dismissal of a defamation lawsuit that had been brought by seven Muslim groups against the newspaper, the Jyllands-Posten. (See prior posting.) The lawsuit was triggered by the paper's printing in 2005 of controversial caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad...

Suit Challenges South Carolina's "I Believe" License Plates

Posted on June 20, 2008
On behalf of three ministers, a rabbi and a Hindu organization, Americans United for Separation of Church and State yesterday filed suit in federal court in South Carolina challenging the state's newly authorized "I Believe" specialty license plate. (AU press release...

Pennsylvania Labor Bill Would Protect Lay Teachers In Religious Schools

Posted on June 20, 2008
In Pennsylvania last week, state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski introduced HB 2626 to extend coverage of the Pennsylvania Labor Relations Act to lay teachers and other lay employees in religious schools. The bill provides that in labor disputes involving a religious organization, the state Labor Relations Board may not define or interpret religious doctrine, but may determine whether religious doctrine is being used as a pretext...

Court Says Scheduling Contempt Hearing On Jewish Holiday Did Not Violate Rights

Posted on June 20, 2008
In Segelman v. City of Springfield, (D MA, June 11, 2008), a Massachusetts federal district court rejected Shalom Segelman's claim that the city of Springfield, Massachusetts violated his free exercise, equal protection and due process rights when it "insisted" that a contempt proceeding against him go forward in state Housing Court on a Jewish holiday...

Israel's Justice Minister Wants To Dismiss Rabbinical Judge Who Invalidated Conversions

Posted on June 20, 2008
The London Jewish Chronicle today reports on a new clash in Israel between government and the Orthodox Jewish religious establishment. Controversy has raged over a recent ruling by Israel's Supreme Rabbinical Court that invalidated conversions carried out over the last nine years by the country's special conversion court...

Large Number of San Diego Employees Opt Out of Performing Gay Marriages

Posted on June 20, 2008
When San Diego County Clerk Greg Smith told employees last month that he would accommodate those who had religious objections to performing gay marriages (see prior posting), he did not expect the response he received. According to yesterday's San Diego Union-Tribune, at least 14 employees have raised religious objections...

CAIR Wants Indian Official Excluded Because of Religious Persecution

Posted on June 20, 2008
Section 604 of the International Religious Freedom Act (8 USC 1182(a)(2)(G) ) excludes from the U.S. "any alien who, while serving as a foreign government official, was responsible for or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom...

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