Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- The Supreme Court, in its denial of cert, kept in place the Fifth Circuit’s decision preventing abortion groups from subpoenaing Texas’ Catholic bishops in order to discover internal deliberations regarding abortion.
- The Indiana legislature is considering a bill that would allow public high schools to count time spent on optional religious instruction as academic credit, a change from the original version of the bill which would have required schools to display “In God We Trust” in all classrooms.
- A Christian woman refused to do a lesbian couple’s taxes after finding out they got married in July and were submitting their taxes jointly.
- A lawsuit filed by the Christian Fellowship Center of New York alleges the village of Canton’s zoning rules violate a federal law that prohibits discrimination against religious institutions.
- The Baltimore City Council approved an outside legal contract to handle religious lawsuits pertaining to zoning issues that purportedly blocked residents from practicing their religion.
- A federal judge in Tennessee allowed the founders of a Pagan temple to move ahead with their RLUIPA claim and their claim that they are not a “church or similar place of worship” as used in the city’s zoning ordinance.
- Colorado Catholic dioceses submit to voluntary sex abuse review by a former federal prosecutor, and the church has agreed to pay an unlimited amount of reparations to victims.
- The Iowa Senate is moving forward on a bill that would require courts to employ strict scrutiny to cases involving religion.
- The Supreme Court denied cert in a RFRA challenge brought by a group of nuns that challenged a natural gas pipeline being built through their land in Pennsylvania as contrary to their 2005 Land Ethic holding all creation is sacred.
- The Southern Poverty Law Center released a report Wednesday that the number of hate groups in the United States is up thirty percent in the last four years, which it tied directly to Donald Trump’s presidency.
- Hoda Muthana, an Alabama woman who joined ISIS, wishes to return the United States, according to a lawyer for her family.
- New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan held a press conference highlighting options available to pregnant mothers in the wake of the state’s new Reproductive Health Act.
- French President Macron promises to act as almost 100 graves were vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in eastern France hours before nationwide rallies denouncing anti-Semitism.