Some important law-and-religion stories from around the web:
- The Supreme Court rules 7-2 in favor of Trinity Lutheran Church in the closely watched church-state case concerning the availability of public funds for use in a religious school for playground resurfacing.
- The Supreme Court also, for the most part, stayed the preliminary injunctions entered by the Fourth and Ninth Circuits in the also closely-watched “travel ban” litigation, and agreed to hear the consolidated cases in the fall.
- A group of over 100 Iraqi Christians rounded up by ICE won a brief reprieve from deportation.
- An appeals court has dismissed for lack of standing an ACLU challenge to a new Mississippi law creating religious accommodations to anti-discrimination laws.
- Pro-life activists facing 15 felony charges in California for alleged illegal recording and unlawful attempts to access Planned Parenthood computer records won the dismissal of 14 of the charges, although prosecutors have indicated they will try to refile them.
- New legislation in New York raises the minimum age in the state for consenting to marry to 14, leaving two states in the U.S. that still permit 14-year-olds to marry.
- A federal criminal case targeting an alleged conspiracy to perform female genital mutilation procedures on girls in the U.S. has expanded with the indictment of two of the girls’ mothers.