Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- The families challenging the San Diego Unified School District’s “Anti-Islamophobia Initiative” finalized a settlement agreement with the district.
- A group of Newton, Massachusetts taxpayers filed suit against the Newton School Committee for purportedly indoctrinating students with anti-Semitism, bigotry against Israel, and Islamist religious dogma in violation of the Equal Rights Amendment of the Massachusetts Constitution and the Massachusetts Student Anti-Discrimination Act.
- West Virginia’s attorney general announced that the state filed suit against a Catholic diocese, alleging it knowingly employed pedophiles.
- Bavaria’s constitutional court upheld the southern German state’s ban on judges and prosecutors wearing headscarves.
- The U.S. Supreme Court asked the Solicitor General to file a brief in Patterson v. Walgreen Co., a Title VII religious accommodation case relating to a Seventh Day Adventist employee.
- The South African North Gauteng High Court set aside the Dutch Reformed Church’s decision not to recognize same-sex marriages, as same-sex marriage has been legal in South Africa since the Civil Union Act of 2006.
- A federal judge has found that a jury will decide whether a Georgia school system’s decision to halt a yoga program was done to promote Christianity.
- Quebec will exempt certain civil servants from its religious symbols ban by including a grandfather clause.
- A church in Washington has filed suit to challenge a law requiring insurance plans that cover maternity care to “also provide a covered person with substantially equivalent coverage to permit the abortion of a pregnancy” as violating its free exercise rights.
- Attorneys for clergy sex abuse victims released a new 180-page report Wednesday detailing the 395 Illinois priests publicly accused of sexual abuse.
- Russia deported two U.S. Mormon Church volunteers after they spent almost three weeks in jail.
- The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by a Catholic Hawaiian bed and breakfast owner who violated Hawaii’s public accommodation law by refusing to rent a room to a lesbian couple.
- Over 100 religious clergy members from across Tennessee signed a statement opposing six state legislative bills that “strike at the dignity of LGBT people.”
- Israel’s Supreme Court disqualified Michael Ben Ari, the leader of a Jewish ultranationalist party, from running in the country’s elections because of his anti-Arab ideology and incitement.