Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- The U.S. Supreme Court held in In Our Lady of Guadalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru that two elementary school teachers in separate Catholic schools are covered by the “ministerial exception” and that they cannot sue for employment discrimination.
- The U.S. Supreme Court granted review in Uzuegbunam v. Preczwski, a case which grows out of a challenge to Georgia Gwinnett College’s speech policies that led to a student being stopped from distributing religious literature on campus.
- The U.S. Supreme Court summarily granted certiorari, vacated the judgment below and remanded to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals three cases involving challenges to the Trump Administration’s broadened contraceptive mandate exemptions: Department of Health and Human Services v. California (Docket No. 19-1038), March for Life Education v. California (Docket No. 19-1040), and Little Sisters of the Poor v. California (Docket No. 19-1053).
- The Fourth Circuit vacated the district court’s dismissal of a lawsuit by a Rastafarian inmate who spent over four years in solitary confinement for refusal to cut his hair because his religion does not permit him to do so.
- A Florida federal district court granted a preliminary injunction requiring county officials to allow a church to operate a religious transition home for 3 to 6 unrelated adults.
- Turkey’s President formally reconverted Istanbul’s sixth-century Hagia Sophia into a mosque and declared it open for Muslim worship, sparking controversy and dismay among Orthodox Christians.