Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- The Supreme Court denied a request for an emergency injunction to permit Catholic Social Services to continue placing children in foster homes while litigation over the religious agency’s refusal to certify same-sex couples as prospective foster parents continues in lower courts.
- The Texas Supreme Court declined to review a lower court’s ruling that permitted cheerleaders to display Bible verses on run-through banners at high school football games.
- A federal judge ruled that the Pennsylvania House of Representatives’ guest chaplain policy violated the Establishment Clause because it prohibited people who do not believe in God from delivering opening invocations.
- The Eighth Circuit dismissed a claim brought by the Satanic Temple regarding Missouri’s abortion laws for lack of standing.
- Catholic bishops in Pennsylvania voice their support for a victims’ compensation fund as an alternative to permitting victims of sexual abuse whose claims are time-barred to sue in court.
- Catholic bishops in Australia object to recommendations for compulsory reporting laws aimed at priests who learn of abuse in private confessionals.
- South Africa’s high court orders the government to enact legislation recognizing Muslim marriages to provide women with greater protection in case of divorce.
- Indonesian President Joko Widodo revives the country’s founding secular ideology, “Pancasila,” in an effort to counter the growth of radical Islamist ideology.
- A federal judge in Boston denied a civic group’s request for an injunction to compel the city to fly a Christian flag from a municipal flagpole in connection with the group’s upcoming Constitution Day event.
- Geert Wilders, an anti-Islam Dutch lawmaker, cancelled a scheduled Prophet Mohammad cartoon drawing contest amid safety and security concerns.
- The DOJ has begun investigating whether the City of Farmersville, Texas, violated RLUIPA by disapproving the Islamic Association of Collin County’s proposed cemetery.
- Americans United for Separation of Church and State demanded President Trump discontinue meetings with his Evangelical Advisory Board, alleging violations of the Federal Advisory Committee Act.