Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- Bishop James Massa, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, responded to Vice President Vance’s recent criticism of Pope Leo XIV’s Palm Sunday Homily, emphasizing that “When Pope Leo XIV speaks as supreme pastor of the universal Church, he is not merely offering opinions on theology, he is preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ.”
- This week, the Justice Department Office of Legal Policy’s Weaponization Working Group published a 37-page report which concluded, in part, that “the Biden DOJ ‘engaged in biased enforcement of the FACE Act’ and ‘pursued more severe charges and significantly harsher sentences for peaceful pro-life defendants than violent pro-abortion defendants.'”
- In a press release following the final hearing of the President’s Religious Liberty Commission, Chairman Dan Patrick rejected the notion that the First Amendment requires a total separation of church and state.
- Ohio Attorney General David Yost has filed suit seeking to prevent Hebrew Union College (HUC) from closing its 150-year-old Cincinnati rabbinical school.
- The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne and Rosary Hill Home, a hospice care facility in New York, filed suit in a New York federal district court challenging New York’s requirements for care of transgender patients.
- On April 14th, a settlement was reached between the Coast Guard and three Coast Guard members who had brought a class action after they were denied religious exemptions from the military’s COVID vaccine mandate. Among other things, the Agreement requires the Coast Guard to remove references in personnel records of service members’ decision to remain unvaccinated.