Some interesting law and religion stories from around the web this week:

• A federal judge found that New York’s MTA violated a pro-Israel group’s First Amendment rights when it refused to run an ad on buses last year. The MTA says it was concerned that the ad, which shows a man with a scarf across his face next to the words, “Killing Jews is Worship that draws us close to Allah,” would incite violence.
• A Michigan State Senate panel passed three bills allowing faith-based adoption agencies to decline to serve prospective parents based on their religious beliefs. The bills allow agencies with religious objections to adoption by same-sex or unmarried couples to refer these couples to other agencies.
• Religious leaders and activists urged President Obama to nominate a “special envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East and South Central Asia,” a position which has been vacant since its creation, while the extreme violence against Christians and other religious minorities in these areas has escalated.
• The author of a California bill that would end an exemption for people who object to vaccinations on religious or other grounds said he would revive the measure, which stalled in the legislature last week.
  • Similarly, the Australian government is eliminating the country’s religious exemption for vaccinations after finding it is no longer “current or necessary.”
• North Carolina’s McDowell County approved adding the national motto, “In God We Trust,” to its public buildings, becoming the third municipality in the state to approve the addition.
• A federal district court in Tennessee upheld a county’s policy of allowing clergy to deliver opening invocations at county meetings.
• Opinion: Obama only mentions Christians to lecture them, rather than defend them from persecution.
• Lawyers for a Chicago teen accused of trying to join Islamic State in Syria argued the case should be dismissed on First Amendment grounds, because the teen believed he had a religious obligation to emigrate to an Islamic Caliphate.
• A Nwe Jersey rabbi was convicted of conspiracy to commit kidnapping as part of a scheme to force recalcitrant husbands to grant divorces under Jewish law.
• A member of an Israeli delegation attending memorial events in Armenia called for Israel to recognize that an Armenian genocide occurred.