Religion & Law

Excluding Juror Because of Clergy Spouse Held Proper

Posted on April 09, 2008
In Green v. Prosper, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 18358 (CD CA, Feb. 28, 2008), a California federal district judge in a brief opinion adopted the report and recommendation of a federal magistrate judge denying a habeas corpus petition by a convicted felon who had unsuccessfully challenged his robbery conviction in state court...

British Christian Group To Sue Google Over Rejection of Online Ad

Posted on April 09, 2008
In Britain, the Christian Institute plans to file suit against Google challenging its refusal to sell the Institute a pay-per-click ad (text of proposed ad) that would be triggered by a Google search for the word "abortion". Yesterday Life Site News and a Christian Institute press release both reported details...

Appeal Filed In Santeria Sacrifice Case

Posted on April 09, 2008
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, representing Santeria priest Jose Merced (press release), yesterday filed an appeal with the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in Merced v. City of Euless. (See prior postings 1, 2.) In the case, a Texas federal district court upheld a decision by the the City of Euless to deny Merced a permit to sacrifice a goat...

Affidavit In FLDS Child-Custody Proceedings Released By Court

Posted on April 09, 2008
Media stories yesterday and today (New York Times, Fort Worth Star-Telegram ) gave wide coverage to an affidavit (full text) filed in Sleicher County, Texas District Court in which an investigative supervisor for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services describes the phone calls by a 16-year old inside the FLDS ranch near San Angelo, Texas that led to the much publicized raid on the compound...

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FLDS Church Is Challenging Search Warrant; Wants Searh of Temple Banned

Posted on April 08, 2008
Attorneys for the FLDS Church have filed papers challenging the continuing execution of the search warrant at the group's YFZ Ranch near San Angelo, Texas. Some 401 children have been removed from the ranch and placed into temporary state custody. (See prior posting...

Scientology Demands Its Confidential Documents Be Removed From Wikileak

Posted on April 08, 2008
A law firm representing the Church of Scientology has demanded that the website Wikileaks remove the full unedited version of the Church of Scientology's Operating Thetan (OT) documents that it has posted online. M-Net today reports that this 612-page "bible" of Scientology-- titled The Technical Bulletins of Dianetics and Scientology-- is normally restricted to top-ranking Scientology members...

Japan Mayor Hit With Monetary Penalty For Church-State Violation

Posted on April 08, 2008
In Japan, an appellate court, the Kanazawa branch of the Nagoya High Court, has ruled that Hakusan Mayor Mitsuo Kado violated Japan's constitution when in 2005 he attended a ceremony at the Shirayama Hime Shrine and delivered a congratulatory speech. The court wrote: "The defendant's congratulatory speech is of a religious nature, and constitutes a religious activity (by a government official) banned by Article 20 of the Constitution...

Posting of Bonds and Liens Ordered In Westboro Funeral Picketing Appeal

Posted on April 08, 2008
The Baltimore Sun last week reported that a Maryland federal district judge has ordered two leaders of the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church to post bond in order to proceed with their appeal of a $5 million judgment issued against them in February...

India's High Court Permits Churches To Aid Christian Victims In Orissa

Posted on April 08, 2008
As previously reported, last December six Christian churches in the Indian state of Orissa were attacked and burned by Hindu extremists. Homes were also destroyed. Yesterday's Calcutta Telegraph reports on subsequent developments. In January, after the rioting and arson, Orissa's district collector ruled that no charitable or religious organization could carry out relief work in the area, arguing that relief groups would create further tension by focusing their aid only on a particular community...

Recent Prisoner Free Exercise Litigation and Decisions

Posted on April 08, 2008
In Haymes v. Nardolillo, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 25822 (ED PA, March 31, 2008), a Pennsylvania federal district court dismissed a Muslim inmate's free exercise claim. The court upheld prison officials' refusal to permit plaintiff to attend prayer services and their refuseal to appoint an Islamic chaplain to lead prayers and services...

Canadian Study Says Get Court Review of Polygamy Ban Before Prosecutions

Posted on April 08, 2008
Echoing a 2007 report by a special prosecutor, yesterday Vancouver lawyer Leonard Doust recommended to the Attorney General of the Canadian province of British Columbia that before prosecuting members of the polygamist FLDS colony in Bountiful, B.C., the government should ask the B...

Florida Church Said To Have Violated IRS Campaign Limits

Posted on April 07, 2008
Melissa Rogers on Saturday gave extensive coverage to charges that Tampa Bay, Florida's largest church, known as "Without Walls" , may have violated tax code limits on non-profits by directing its staff members to make political contributions to Gov. Charlie Crist's campaign two years ago...

Legal Background For Police Raid of FLDS Texas Ranch

Posted on April 07, 2008
Since Thursday, police authorities have removed 159 children and 60 adults from the YFZ Ranch in Eldorado, Texas. The ranch is home to as many as 400 members of the polygamous sect, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, formerly led by Warren Jeffs...

British Film Board Reconsidering 1989 Ban On Religious Film

Posted on April 07, 2008
Sunday's London Guardian reports that as Britain's blaspheny law is about to be repealed (see prior posting), the British Board of Film Classification is rethinking its controversial 1989 ruling refusing a release license for the film Visions of Ecstasy...

Court Rejects Free Exercise Defense To Whale Hunting Indictment

Posted on April 07, 2008
The Peninsula Daily News reports that last week a Tacoma, Washington federal magistrate judge refused to dismiss misdemeanor charges against two members of the Makah tribe charged with hunting whale in violation of the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act...

In Scotland, Muslim Speeder Says He Needs Auto To Travel Between Two Wives

Posted on April 07, 2008
Last Thursday, in a hearing on a speeding citation in a court in Scotland, a restaurant owner succeeded in avoiding suspension of his driver's license so he can continue to use his auto to commute to work. This routine ruling has been covered in This Is London because defendant Mohammed Anwar, a Muslim, also told the court that he has an additional need for his car...

Recently Available Articles and Book of Interest

Posted on April 07, 2008
From NELLCO:Erin Guiffre, If They Can Raze it, Why Can't I? A Constitutional Analysis of Statutory and Judicial Religious Exemptions to Historic Preservation Ordinances, (Georgetown Law Historic Preservation Papers Series, Paper 20, April 29, 2007).From SmartCILP:Randy Lee, Reflecting on Negligence Law and the Catholic Experience: Comparing Apples and Elephants, 20 St...

Baptist Groups Challenges Press Coverage of Obama's Church Affiliation

Posted on April 06, 2008
Leaders of three predominantly African-American Baptist denominations on Friday released a a statement attacking the way in which the press has covered Barack Obama's membership in Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. Religion Blog sets out the statement which complains that press coverage of Obama has created a religious test for office in violation of the Constitution's Art...

Fisherman's Bible Defense Fails In Canadian Court

Posted on April 06, 2008
In Barrington, Nova Scotia, fisherman Ralph Thomas Atkinson was convicted of violating Canadian regulations by fishing in an unauthorized area in Georges Bank, despite his novel "Bible defense." Friday's Nova Scotia Chronicle Herald reports that, as part of his closing argument at trial, Atkinson insisted on reading to the court Matthew, Chap...

California Jury Awards $6.54M In Religious Discrimination Suit

Posted on April 06, 2008
A federal district court jury in Sacramento, California on Friday awarded $647,174 in actual damages and $5.9 million in punitive damages to a software developer who says she was denied a promotion, and later laid off, because she was not a member of the Fellowship of Friends...

Break-Away Episcopal Churches Win On First Part of Their Case

Posted on April 06, 2008
On Thursday, in In Re: Multi-Circuit Episcopal Church Property Litigation, (VA Cir. Ct., April 3, 2008), a Fairfax County (VA) trial judge issued an 88- page "Letter Opinion on the Applicability of Va. Code § 57-9(A) " to eleven Virginia churches that broke away from the Episcopal Church USA...

Appeal Questions Whether California's Privilege Law Is Discriminatory

Posted on April 06, 2008
Friday's Riverside (CA) Press-Enterprise reports that child molestation defendant Gilbert Simental has filed an interlocutory appeal after a Riverside, California state court judge last week ordered two elders of a Jehovah's Witness congregation to testify about admissions that Simental reportedly made...

Midwife Who Refuses Registration Agrees To New Injunction

Posted on April 06, 2008
In Delta, Colorado, midwife Theanna Sparrow Davis agreed to the entry of a permanent injunction preventing her from practicing midwifery unless she registers with the appropriate state licensing agencies-- something she says her religious beliefs preclude her from doing...

Conservative Prof Can Proceed With Discrimination Claims

Posted on April 06, 2008
In Adams v. Trustees of the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, (ED NC, March 31, 2008), a North Carolina federal district court allowed, Prof. Michael S. Adams, a University of North Carolina faculty member and nationally syndicated conservative columnist, to proceed against the University with free speech and religious discrimination claims under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act...

Street Preachers' Suit Against Louisiana Town Proceeds Toward Trial

Posted on April 06, 2008
In World Wide Street Preachers' Fellowship v. Town of Columbia, Louisiana, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 26929 (WD LA, April 3, 2008), a Louisiana federal district court issued an opinion in a case on remand from the 5th Circuit. (See prior posting.) The case involves a group of demonstrators protesting abortion and other matters of religious belief who sued the city of Columbia (LA) after a state trooper dispersed their demonstration and arrested one of its members...

Florida Commission Rejects Constitutional Amendment On School Vouchers

Posted on April 06, 2008
On Friday, Florida's Taxation and Budget Reform Commission narrowly defeated a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have permitted-- or perhaps required-- Florida to provide private school vouchers. The Sarasota Herald Tribune and the Orlando Sentinel report on the 16-9 vote by the Commission...

Canadian Court Upholds Town's Zoning Action Against Hasidic Group

Posted on April 06, 2008
Friday's Montreal Gazette reported that the Quebec Court of Appeal has rejected a religious freedom challenge to action by the small Laurentian town of Val Morin banning a Hasidic community from continuing to use two chalets every summer for a school and a synagogue...

Suit Challenges 4th of July Display Limits That Excluded Cross

Posted on April 04, 2008
In Norfolk, Virginia yesterday, the Christian Rights Ministries (CRM) filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Chesapeake over events that took place last July 4. After Chesapeake's 4th of July parade, participating groups set up booths in a local park...

Obama's Church Sets Ground Rules For Reporters

Posted on April 04, 2008
Today's Chicago Tribune reports that leaders of Barack Obama's Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago have set new rules for media access to church services. Reporters must get permission on Thursday to attend Sunday services, they must check in, wear a badge and refrain from interviewing members on church property...

Israeli Court Gives Narrow Interpretation To "Hametz Law"

Posted on April 04, 2008
As the Jewish holiday of Passover approaches later this month, an Israeli court-- the Jerusalem Municipal Affairs Court-- has quashed indictments against four private businesses that had been indicted for selling leavened products during Passover last year...

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