Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the execution of an inmate who argued that he was subject to religious discrimination because a Buddhist priest was not permitted in the execution room with him, while state-employed Christian or Muslim religious advisors are.
- Texas’s Attorney General is investigating the San Antonio City Council for First Amendment violations after it prevented Chick-fil-A—a popular chicken franchise known for its leaders’ Christian views and for opposing same-sex marriage—from opening a location in the city’s airport.
- Texas’s Senate State Affairs Committee approved of a bill that would protect state-licensed professionals who wish to deny services to those who defy their “sincerely held” religious beliefs.
- The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development charged Facebook with violating the Fair Housing Act by enabling advertisers to exclude people from viewing their advertisements based on nationality and religion.
- The Quebec government introduced a bill Thursday that would bar public school teachers, judges, police officers, and other government employees from wearing religious symbols while working, including Muslim head scarves, Catholic crosses, Jewish skullcaps, and Sikh turbans.
- A crucifix that has been affixed to the wall in Montreal’s city council chambers for over eighty years will be removed next month “to reaffirm the secular character of the chamber.”
- On April 3, the southeast Asian kingdom of Brunei will implement a new law that punishes homosexual sex and adultery with death by stoning, part of a new penal code based on Sharia Law.
- A twenty-five-year-old Virginia man was sentenced to eight life sentences in prison for the rape and murder of a teenage Muslim girl during Ramadan two years ago.
- Pope Francis issued new legislation that requires Vatican officials to immediately report allegations of sex abuse to Vatican prosecutors or face fines and possible jail time.
- The Catholic Diocese of Charleston (SC) released a list of forty-two priests—all but eleven of whom have died—who have been credibly accused of sexually abusing children.
- A judge in Uniontown (PA) granted a motion to vacate a former Protestant youth minister’s convictions of indecent exposure and corruption of minors on the ground that the statute of limitations had expired.
- A former Catholic deacon is suing the Diocese of Lubbock (TX) for defamation, claiming he was wrongly named on the diocese’s list of clergy credibly accused of sexually abusing minors.
- A Chilean court has ordered the country’s Roman Catholic Church to pay 100 million pesos ($146,000) for “moral damages” to each of the three victims in a sex abuse case against former priest Fernando Karadima.
- Saint Joseph the Worker parish in San José de Chila, Mexico, was pillaged and riddled with bullets during a power struggle between two drug-trafficking cartels.
- A synagogue in Flagstaff (AZ) was vandalized with depictions of hate symbols.
- Chinese authorities raided and shut down Shouwang Church in Beijing, a popular underground house church said to be attended by over 1,000 people, because the congregation refused to register with the government as a “social organization.”
- The New Jersey Legislature passed a bill, which Gov. Phil Murphy (D) is expected to sign, permitting physician-assisted suicide for adults with a prognosis of six months or less to live.
- A coalition of faith and civil rights organizations has requested a meeting with FBI Director Christopher Wray, arguing that the agency should focus on the threat of white nationalism after several attacks on houses of worship in recent years.
- A group of LGBT employees of the U.S. Department of Justice wrote Attorney General William Barr a letter informing him that they face ongoing discrimination and declining morale.
- The Minnesota Department of Human Rights is suing the Anoka-Hennepin School District and School Board for requiring a biologically female transgender student competing on the boys’ swim team to use a separate, “enhanced privacy” locker room.
- A former Catholic school principal and deacon has been charged, along with his wife, with stealing $150,000 from St. Francis Academy and the Most Blessed Sacrament Parish, both of which are in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown (PA).
- New York City police are searching for a female suspect accused of punching a praying seventy-year-old woman in the face at St. Monica’s Church in Manhattan.
- An eighty-five-year-old pro-life man was assaulted as he prayed and peacefully protested outside a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic in San Francisco (CA).
- The Center for Reproductive Rights is challenging Mississippi’s new fetal heartbeat bill, which Gov. Phil Bryant signed March 21 and is set to become law July 1.
- Utah Gov. Gary Herbert signed a bill into law banning most abortions after eighteen weeks of gestation.
- Arkansas’s Legislature has sent Gov. Asa Hutchinson a bill that would prohibit doctors from performing an abortion sought solely because the fetus has been diagnosed with Down syndrome.
- A federal district judge struck down a North Carolina law that banned abortion after twenty weeks of gestation.
- Georgia lawmakers have sent a fetal heartbeat bill to Gov. Brian Kemp, who supports the legislation and is expected to sign it into law.