Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- The Supreme Court heard the first major LGBT-rights case to reach the Court since Obergefell v. Hodges, which extended constitutional protections to same-sex marriage, to consider whether Title VII protects gay and transgender employees from discrimination.
- The Satanic Temple (TST) is pursuing a legal challenge after receiving emails from students complaining that public school computers that allow access to websites for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim organizations block TST’s website.
- Virginia prisons, under a settlement with the Department of Justice, are relaxing restrictions on group worship and rules that inhibit access to religiously compliant meals following a federal investigation into whether the Department of Corrections violated inmates’ religious rights.
- South American bishops met at a high-profile meeting on the Amazon region, where Catholics can go months without seeing a priest or receiving sacraments, to consider whether married elders could be ordained priests to better minister to remote indigenous communities.
- After unsuccessfully invading a synagogue in Berlin during Yom Kippur services, a heavily armed anti-Semitic assailant killed two people and wounded two others outside the temple and broadcasted parts of the attack on a live-streaming platform.
- A recently surfaced drone video appearing to show hundreds of blindfolded prisoners raises new concerns over China’s detention of hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities over the last two-and-a-half years.