Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- The U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning hate and intolerance—in particular, anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim discrimination—in the wake of freshman Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-Minn.) critical comments about Israel.
- A public school teacher in Bountiful, Utah, has been placed on administrative leave after she forced a fourth-grade Catholic student to wipe the Ash Wednesday cross off of his forehead.
- The Third Circuit heard oral argument on whether sex-segregated pool hours at Country Place Condo Association, whose residents and board members are almost exclusively Orthodox Jewish, constitutes discrimination under the Fair Housing Act.
- Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon, France, was found guilty and sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for failing to report accusations of sexual abuse against a priest.
- New York state lawmakers are considering a bill that would add to the school calendar six additional religious holidays—two Islamic, two Hindu, one Sikh, and Christian Good Friday.
- A Malaysian man was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for insulting Islam and the Prophet Muhammad on Facebook.
- The Florida House’s Pre-K–12 Quality Subcommittee approved a bill that would require all Florida public high schools to offer elective courses on the study of the Bible.
- Twenty-two states have filed lawsuits in an effort to stop the Trump administration from enforcing its revision to the Title X Family Planning Program, which bars federally funded family planning clinics from making abortion referrals.
- Sam Brownback, U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, called on Beijing to end religious persecution, while requesting an open visit to China’s internment camps for Muslims in Xinjiang.
- Ikea is facing a class-action lawsuit for gender discrimination after it published a furniture catalog targeting Israel’s Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community that featured pictures of only males.
- Covington Catholic High School student Nicholas Sandmann will sue CNN for $250 million over its coverage of the viral incident between him and a Native American protestor outside the Lincoln Memorial in January.
- A coalition of Yeshivas filed a lawsuit claiming New York’s new State Education Department guidelines regulating private schools are overly intrusive.
- Maryland’s House of Delegates passed a bill to legalize physician-assisted suicide.
- Kahala Nui retirement home (HI) is now permitting residents to use lethal medications to aid in dying after the ACLU complained that the retirement home, which prohibited the practice because it would violate provisions of its lease with the Catholic Church, discriminated on the basis of religion, in violation of federal and state fair-housing laws.
- A fifty-nine-year-old man was arrested and charged with a hate crime in Bloomingdale, Illinois, after he attacked his Lyft driver and yelled racial slurs at her because she was Muslim.
- The Colorado Catholic Conference has expressed support for a bill recently approved by the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee that seeks to repeal the death penalty.
- The Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, South Africa, declared the Dutch Reformed Church’s policy against same-sex marriage unlawful and invalid.
- The Utah state legislature passed a bill repealing the misdemeanor crime of fornication, making it legal to have sex outside of marriage.
- Hundreds of Muslim parents and their children organized and demonstrated against Parkfield Community School in Birmingham (UK) over the school’s plan to implement lessons on LGBT rights.
- French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner announced that anti-Semitic acts increased by seventy-four percent last year.
- Authorities raided the Episcopal Conference of Costa Rica and Metropolitan Curai headquarters in San José as part of an investigation of two priests accused of sexually abusing minors.
- The Ancient Order of Hibernians, an Irish-American Catholic fraternal organization, disinvited N.Y. State Sen. James Gaughran from St. Patrick’s Day festivities and asked him to resign as a member because he voted in favor of the Reproductive Health Act, a controversial abortion bill.
- Fights broke out after thousands of young ultra-Orthodox Jews tried to prevent a group of progressive Jewish women from praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
- A New Jersey firefighter and Christian pastor sued Atlantic City (NJ) and fire department officials for threatening to suspend him without pay if he did not shave his beard, which he claims he grew for religious reasons.
- U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services denied the green card application of a Muslim man who alleged Border Patrol agents served him pork sandwiches for six days while he was detained.
- Nicaragua’s Roman Catholic bishops have declined a request to participate in talks between the government and representatives of the opposition civic alliance, arguing it is time for lay people to find a solution.
- The U.S. State Department awarded Orla Treacy, a Loreto sister from Bray, Ireland, an International Women of Courage award for her work educating girls in South Sudan.
- El Salvador’s Supreme Court commuted the thirty-year prison sentences of three women convicted of aggravated homicide for having abortions.
- Tennessee’s House of Representatives passed a fetal heartbeat bill, which seeks to ban abortions once the baby’s heartbeat is detected.
- Georgia’s House Health and Human Services Committee approved a fetal heartbeat bill, which could soon move to a vote before the full House.
- Rhode Island’s House of Representatives passed a bill that seeks to codify a women’s right to an abortion over strenuous objections from the Roman Catholic Church.
- Follow up from last Monday’s AtW: French police say that the large memorial stone knocked off its plinth at the site of Strasbourg’s Old Synagogue was caused by a motorist and was not an act of anti-Semitism.