Some interesting law and religion news stories from around the web this week:
- A Chinese lawyer who has opposed a government campaign to tear down churches and church crosses faces up to six months in secretive detention after the police detained him and accused him of threatening state security, his colleague said on Tuesday.
- On Monday, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in Brown v. Livingston, in which a Texas federal district court held that requiring official staff or volunteer supervision for group religious services violates RLUIPA rights of Muslim inmates. The oral arguments are available here.
- A controversial bill to allow physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients in California passed a key legislative committee on Tuesday, after failing in the legislature earlier this summer amid opposition from the Catholic Church.
- Foreign Affairs reports that religious discrimination is an “equal opportunity endeavor,” and repression is a problem that transcends class, color, and creed.
- Turkey’s official religious ministry, the Directorate of Religious Affairs, issued a report about the Islamic State, explaining how IS “deviates from Islamic norms, wreaks carnage on innocent people and defames the name of Islam.“
- At least 10,000 people gathered at the South Carolina State House for “Stand with God, Pro-Family Rally,” where Republican presidential candidates Ted Cruz and Rick Perry and U.S. senators spoke about faith and moral issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion.
- A mass baptism that unfolded on the football field of a public high school in Georgia is now under investigation, the local school district says.
- Employers do not need to provide insurance coverage for contraception even if their objections are moral rather than religious, a federal judge here ruled on Monday.
- The Jesus statue on Big Mountain in Montana, a tribute to World War II veterans commissioned by the Kalispell Knights of Columbus more than 60 years ago, can remain standing on U.S. Forest Service land, a 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled on Monday.
- On Monday, Myanmar’s president signed into law the last of four controversial bills championed by radical Buddhists but decried by rights groups as aimed at discriminating against the country’s Muslim minority.
- Jains have been at the center of an international debate about religious freedom in recent days after a state high court in India ruled that one of their key rituals, a fast unto death called Santhara, was illegal.
- Hundreds of Russians rallied in Saint Petersburg on Sunday after a century-old bas-relief of a mythical demon was destroyed amid fears of increasing religious intolerance under President Vladimir Putin.