Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- Christian baker Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, filed another lawsuit in federal court challenging the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s finding that Phillips’s refusal to bake a cake celebrating gender transition, which Phillips said is contrary to his religious beliefs, violated public accommodations law.
- Alabama public schools contemplate setting up “In God We Trust” displays in accordance with an Alabama law made effective this July.
- The Humanist Society of Scotland (HSS) published data indicating that 59% of Scotland’s population identifies as non-religious; the HSS married more couples than the Church of Scotland for the first time last year.
- Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi proposed changing Tunisia’s inheritance system to give women equal inheritance rights, incurring opposition from those unwilling to change the current state of Islamic law.
- After meeting for two years, a Pennsylvania grand jury issued a redacted report cataloguing child sexual abuse among six of Pennsylvania’s eight Catholic dioceses – the broadest examination of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church by a government agency.
- A United Nations Human Rights committee found China has imprisoned 1 million Uighurs, a Muslim ethnic minority, as part of an attempt to curb Islamic extremism.
- The Military Religious Freedom Foundation demanded Defense Secretary James N. Mattis investigate Air Force Brigadier General E. John Teichert for violating the Department of Defense’s religious proselytizing policies by hosting a website titled “Prayer at Lunchtime for the United States.”