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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web this week:

  • In Rizzo v. New York City Department of Sanitation, a federal district court in New York allowed a sanitation worker’s Title VII failure-to-accommodate claim, based on anti-vaccination beliefs, to proceed, rejecting the city’s argument that the objections were not religious. The court also permitted the worker’s claim that the city failed to engage in cooperative dialogue under New York City Human Rights Law.
  • LifeWise, Inc., a Christian group that provides religious education to public school students, sued a parent for allegedly infringing on the group’s copyrighted curriculum. The parent is accused of fraudulently gaining access to and publishing LifeWise’s internal documents and curriculum on a website opposing the organization.
  • A New York court dismissed cross claims by two Kingsborough Community College faculty members who alleged the school retaliated against them for their anti-Israel views after being sued by Jewish faculty members for a hostile work environment. The court found no evidence of retaliatory actions by the school and stated the school had no duty to prevent the plaintiffs’ discrimination and antisemitism complaints.
  • Oklahoma’s state superintendent, Ryan Walters, directed all public schools to include Bible teachings, including the Ten Commandments, in their curriculums, stating such teachings are essential for historical and cultural understanding, without specifying grade levels. It is unclear if the superintendent has the authority to issue this directive under Oklahoma law.
  • President Biden announced the appointment of Dr. Mohamed Elsanousi to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. Dr. Elsanousi, Executive Director of the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers, has been influential in promoting vaccine equity and religious freedom in Muslim-majority communities.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Religious Freedom & National Security

Before states established religious freedom as a constitutional principle, they saw it as a matter of diplomacy and national security. “Cuius regio eius religio” was meant to keep peace among nations, not so much within them. And religious freedom continues to figure in international relations today–though, sadly, religious freedom is often honored more in words than deeds. A new collection of essays from Routledge, Security, Religion, and the Rule of Law: International Perspectives, argues that national security depends on states’ honoring the religious freedom of their own citizens. The editors are Tania Pagotto (University of Milan-Bicocca), Joshua Roose (Deakin University) and G.P. Marcar (University of Otago). Here’s the description from the publisher’s website:

Security, Religion, and the Rule of Law argues that true, substantive, and sustainable national security is only possible through respect for the rule of law, human rights, and religious freedom.

Despite the emphasis on national security and the war on terror that has preoccupied governments for over two decades, nations – and the world – seem to be more divided than ever, with a concomitant impact of increasing the risk of terrorism and religious and political violence. The national security paradigm, previously reserved primarily for foreign threats, has been turned increasingly inwards, focusing on a state’s own citizens as potential threats. This is often along religious lines, threatening fundamental human freedoms. This book provides a series of critical engagements on some of the most pressing issues at the interface of religion and security today, including proposing a deeper engagement with theology when dealing with freedom of religious belief, exploring a better understanding between domestic peace and international relations, abiding by the rule of law while countering terrorism, and developing a broader understanding of identities and of the nature of citizenship. It provides the resources to further reflect upon and address these topics, as well as stimulate further discussions on religion and security matters across a range of different disciplines. Wide-ranging case studies consider Australia, China, Europe, the Kurdish people, Nigeria, Russia, Ukraine, the United Nations, and the United States.

This book will appeal to students and scholars across a range of disciplines, including international relations, law, philosophy, political science, religious studies, security studies, and theology. It will also appeal to human rights lawyers, judges, NGO researchers, governmental agency specialists, and policy makers.

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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web this week:

  • Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a notice of appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in Youth 71Five Ministries v. Williams, which was dismissed in District Court of Oregon. The ministry is challenging state officials who blocked previously approved funding because the ministry requires its employees to sign a “statement of faith”.
  • In State of Tennessee v. Becerra, the Mississippi District Court issued a nationwide preliminary injunction. The Court barred the enforcement of the new Dept. of Education rule, which extended Title IX sex discrimination definition to discrimination based on gender identity.
  • The District Court in El Paso County, Texas, ruled against the Texas Attorney General in a case brought by Annunciation House, a nonprofit Catholic migrant shelter. The Court held that AG Ken Paxton requested documents unlawfully under the Fourth Amendment in an attempt to “harass” the Catholic shelter’s employees and migrants.
  • The Alaska Supreme Court refused to hold a state statute unconstitutional in State of Alaska, Department of Education & Early Development v. Alexander. The statute allows school districts to provide funding to families to obtain education materials from public, private, or religious organizations. The plaintiffs claim this statute violates the Alaska Constitution which prohibits public funding to be used for the benefit of religious institutions; but the Court found possible constitutional applications of the statute.
  • A Belgian civil court fined an archbishop and cardinal because they denied a woman registration for Deacon training in the Catholic Church. While the court stated the woman should be admitted for training, the question of later ordainment was not addressed.
  • More than 1,300 individuals died during the Hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia this year. Hajj is a mandatory religious pilgrimage for all Muslims in Mecca, Saudi Arabia; it is one of the 5 pillars of Islam. While deaths are a normal occurrence during the Hajj, the deaths this year were excessive, and 83% of the fatalities were unauthorized pilgrims.
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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion stories from around the web:

  • The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari review of a Second Circuit decision upholding the constitutionality of Connecticut’s decision to repeal religious exemptions from its mandatory vaccination laws while retaining medical exemptions. The denial effectively allows the Second Circuit’s ruling to remain in effect, upholding Connecticut lawmakers’ decision to repeal religious objections out of concerns that upticks in exemption requests were coupled with a decline in vaccination rates in some schools.
  • A group of parents (acting on behalf of their children) filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Louisiana, challenging Louisiana’s recently enacted statute that requires the display of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom. In the complaint, plaintiffs allege that the Louisiana statute imposes religious beliefs on public school children and unconstitutionally pressures students into religious observance and adoption of a state-favored religious scripture, all in violation of the Free Exercise and Free Establishment clauses of the First Amendment. Plaintiffs seek declarative and injunctive relief.
  • A federal district court in Florida held that a 2014 prayer vigil organized by the Ocala Police Department meant to encourage witnesses to come out and cooperate with police in the aftermath of a shooting spree that injured several children violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Implementing the Supreme Court’s new Establishment Clause test set out in Kennedy vs. Bremerton School District, the court determined that the city’s involvement in “conceiving, organizing, and implementing the Prayer Vigil” constituted government sponsorship of a religious event, which violated the First Amendment.
  • In Drummond v. Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, the Oklahoma Supreme Court violated the Oklahoma and US Constitutions by authorizing a Catholic-sponsored, publicly-funded charter school. The court ruled that state funding for the school violated anti-establishment provisions in both the state and federal constitutions.
    • Please read Center Director Mark Movsesian’s post about the case here.
  • Israel’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that draft-age Haredi Ultra-Orthodox Jewish men are not exempt from the country’s mandatory military service, even if they are studying in a yeshiva. The Supreme Court also ordered that the Israeli government cease funding yeshivas unless their students enlist in the military.
  • In India, a family that recently converted to Christianity was attacked in the state of Chhattisgarh, resulting in the death of one woman. Christian leaders in India have spoken out against the attack as merely one in a growing number of attacks committed against Christians, largely attributable to mobs who seek to make India a purely Hindu nation. Christian leaders have also condemned police inaction as another reason for increased attacks.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

On the Oklahoma Charter School Decision

Earlier this week, in a much-watched case, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that a charter school, St. Isidore of Seville, is unconstitutional under state and federal law. In a post at the Volokh site today, I argue that this ruling was probably correct. As a charter school, St. Isidore is a hybrid, a cross between a public and a private school, and that makes its legal position complicated. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s not quite as clear as the Oklahoma court makes it seem, but the decision is probably correct, at least respecting the federal constitutional claims. Legally speaking, St. Isidore is caught in a dilemma—a dilemma that its hybrid nature as a charter school creates. If St. Isidore qualifies as a public school, there’s an obvious Establishment Clause problem. St. Isidore argued that it shouldn’t be seen as a public school, but as an independent contractor. But the Oklahoma statute specifically provides that charter schools are “public.” And that’s not just a matter of form, but also substance. As a charter school, St. Isidore is funded entirely by the state, must take all students who apply, and must comply with curricular and other requirements that don’t apply to private schools.

On the other hand, if St. Isidore is a private actor, the US Supreme Court’s recent free exercise cases may not help it too much. In Carson and Espinoza, the Court ruled that the state cannot exclude private religious schools from tuition assistance programs simply because they are religious—that would violate the schools’ right to practice their religion. That seems correct to me. But in those cases, the Court stressed that public funds went to private schools through the filter of parental choice. Parents who received tuition assistance designated which schools would receive the money.

St. Isidore would be entirely free, by contrast, and Oklahoma would be funding the school directly. True, the amount of money St. Isidore would receive would depend, presumably, on the number of students it enrolled—and that would depend on parental choice. But the state is more in the foreground (and the parents more in the background) in this case than in either Carson or Espinoza, and it feels different, somehow.

You can read the whole post here.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

On Law & Ritual in Hasidic Judaism

This one is a little outside my wheelhouse, but it looks quite interesting. Hasidic Judaism is known for its ecstatic approach. And yet, ironically, it is also one of Judaism’s most traditional expressions, with a serious focus on religious law. What explains this paradox? A new book from Stanford University Press, Laws of the Spirit: Ritual, Mysticism, and the Commandments in Early Hasidism, argues (if I understand it right) that Hasidism sees law as a matter of ritual rather than rules for worshippers to work out and follow. Of course, ritual is important in most religions, and in secular law as well, and I wonder if these insights could in some way apply in other contexts, too. The author is religious studies scholar Ariel Mayse (Stanford). Here’s the publisher’s description:

The compelling vision of religious life and practice found in Hasidic sources has made it the most enduring and successful Jewish movement of spiritual renewal of all time. In this book, Ariel Evan Mayse grapples with one of Hasidism’s most vexing questions: how did a religious movement known for its radical views about immanence, revelation, and the imperative to serve God with joy simultaneously produce strict adherence to the structures and obligations of Jewish law? Exploring the movement from its emergence in the mid-1700s until 1815, Mayse argues that the exceptionality of Hasidism lies not in whether its leaders broke or upheld rabbinic norms, but in the movement’s vivid attempt to rethink the purpose of Jewish ritual and practice. Rather than focusing on the commandments as law, he turns to the methods and vocabulary of ritual studies as a more productive way to reckon with the contradictions and tensions of this religious movement as well as its remarkable intellectual vitality.

Mayse examines the full range of Hasidic texts from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, from homilies and theological treatises to hagiography, letters, and legal writings, reading them together with contemporary theories of ritual. Arguing against the notion that spiritual integrity requires unshackling oneself from tradition, Laws of the Spirit is a sweeping attempt to rethink the meaning and significance of religious practice in early Hasidism.

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Legal Spirits 060: Memorial Day, the Knights of Columbus, and the National Park Service

Poplar Grove National Cemetery, Petersburg, Virginia

In this episode, Center Director Mark Movsesian interviews religion journalist Kelsey Dallas about the controversy that arose last month when the National Park Service refused to allow the Knights of Columbus to celebrate an annual Memorial Day Mass at a national cemetery in Virginia. The Park Service said it was enforcing the rules against “demonstrations”; the Knights said the refusal violated the group’s religious freedom. Who was right? And what does this controversy reveal about church-state relations in an increasingly secular America? Listen in!

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Around the Web

Here are some important law-and-religion stories from around the web:

  • In French v. Albany Medical Center, the Northern District of New York found that a hospital did not violate the religious rights of a nurse who refused to receive a flu shot on religious grounds. The Court held that the requested accommodation was not reasonable due to her proximity to flu patients and vulnerable individuals.
  • In Bacon v. Woodward, the Ninth Circuit reversed the dismissal of a suit by firefighters who claimed their free exercise rights were infringed by the City of Spokane’s refusal to accommodate their religious objections to the COVID-19 vaccine. The Court held that the city’s termination of the plaintiffs while inviting potentially unvaccinated firefighters from neighboring departments for assistance constituted more favorable treatment for a secular group.
  • In Blackmon v. State of Missouri, a Missouri trial court held that the references to God and the belief that life starts at conception do not translate into various pro-life statutes running afoul of the Establishment Clause. The Court likened the mention of God to that found in the State’s Constitution, and refused to consider the latter belief as religious.
  • In Russia, a self-proclaimed witch was detained in court after disseminating literature calling for violence against clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church. She was also charged with insulting the feelings of religious believers as well as distributing extremist literature.
  • In Pakistan, a Christian man was killed by a mob of hundreds of individuals after being accused of desecrating a Quran. The United States Center for International Religious Freedom claims that the attack was inspired by Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, which explicitly provide for the death penalty upon anyone found to insult the Islamic faith.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

A New Book on Christianity and Law

Christianity has a complicated relationship to law. Unlike Judaism and Islam, which are nomocentric religions, Christianity doesn’t have a law per se. Believers don’t worship God primarily by discovering and following a system of divinely ordained rules. There is no Christian “law” of inheritance, for example, that directs beneficiaries how to divide up property. But Christianity doesn’t entirely reject law. The Catholic tradition, in particular, places emphasis on natural law as a rational system–an emphasis that Orthodox and Protestants view with great suspicion. As I say, it’s complicated.

When it comes to the relationship between Christianity and civil law, things are complex as well. The Bible teaches Christians to give Caesar his due, but not more than that–to comply with civil law, but not if that means violating God’s law. Where to draw the line, especially in a contemporary, religiously pluralistic society, is often debatable.

A new book by Australian law professor Benjamin Saunders (Deakin University), The Crisis of Civil Law: What the Bible Teaches about Law and What It Means Today, addresses these complications. The publisher is Lexham Press. Looks very interesting. Here is the description from the publisher’s website:

How should Christians think about law?

In every age, this is one of the most difficult questions faced by followers of Christ. Within the modern church, there is little unity on how Scripture addresses issues like gun control, abortion, and whether we should disobey unjust laws. In The Crisis of Civil Law, legal scholar Benjamin B. Saunders draws from Scripture and the Christian tradition to provide valuable guidance on contemporary legal questions and the role of civil government. We can gain greater clarity by wisely applying the moral law found in Scripture—as well as the universal standards of the natural law—to the changing circumstances of human societies.

The Crisis of Civil Law includes detailed discussion of the biblical material on law as well as practical case studies that contextualize scriptural principles in modern Western society.

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Around the Web:

Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web this week:

  • In Woolard v. Thurmond, a California federal court upheld the requirement that state funds for home school programs be used only for secular instructional materials. The court ruled that this policy does not infringe on parents’ free exercise of religion, as states are permitted to provide strictly secular education in public schools.
  • In Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc. v. Abbott, a Texas federal court ordered the state to pay $346,500 in attorneys’ fees to the Freedom From Religion Foundation in connection with litigation over Texas’s removing FFRF’s Bill of Rights Nativity display from the State Capitol in 2015.
  • In Aldersgate United Methodist Church of Montgomery v. Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church, Inc., the Alabama Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit from 44 Methodist congregations trying to disaffiliate from the church’s main body but still keep their property. The court applied the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine, ruling that deciding the case would require it to interpret church doctrine and internal rules, which is prohibited by the First Amendment.
  • The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and others filed a lawsuit against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission challenging the inclusion of abortion as a covered medical condition in the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. The plaintiffs argue this inclusion and the nullification of the Act’s religious exemption will force employers to support abortion.
  • Ohio’s Attorney General filed a lawsuit to prevent Hebrew Union College from selling off its valuable Judaica library collection to address a financial deficit. The lawsuit alleges the college is violating state law by not disclosing the sale to donors and by breaching fiduciary duties by not preserving the collection according to donor intent.