Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • In Ciraci v. J.M. Smucker Company, the Sixth Circuit held that a first amendment free-exercise claim could not be made by employees working for a federal contractor. The employees were denied a religious exemption from a Covid vaccine mandate but, because they were working for a federal contractor and not for the government itself, the court found that constitutional guarantees did not apply to them.
  • In Wrigley v. Romanick, the North Dakota Supreme Court declined to vacate a trial court’s preliminary injunction that barred enforcement of the state’s 2007 abortion ban, which went into effect when the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade last year. The court determined that a critical defect in the abortion ban was the absence of an exception for preserving the health of the mother.
  • Six Jewish parents and two Orthodox Jewish day schools filed a law suit in a California federal district court challenging the exclusion of sectarian schools from receiving funds made available to California user the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The complaint in Loffman v. California Department of Education alleges that the plaintiffs are entitled to equal treatment and should be afforded a portion of the generally available public funding necessary to provide education to students with disabilities.
  • A Christian preschool and the church that sponsors it filed a law suit in a Connecticut federal district court, challenging the removal of religious exemptions from Connecticuts’s statute requiring various vaccinations for preschool children. The complaint in Milford Christian Church v. Russell-Tucker alleges that the requirement violates free exercise, free speech, freedom of association, equal protection, and child rearing rights.
  • The governor of Utah signed HB467, which requires that all abortions performed after January 1, 2024 be performed in hospitals rather than abortion clinics. It goes on to create an exception for rape, incest, and for pregnant females under the age of 14. However, all these abortions are only allowed to be performed before 18 weeks of pregnancy. 
  • The article, Faith After the Pandemic: How COVID-19 Changed American Religion, published on the Survey Center on American Life website, discusses the post-Covid increase in the number of individuals identifying as religiously unaffiliated.
Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • In Fellowship of Christian Athletes v. San Jose Unified School District, the Ninth Circuit vacated its August 2022 decision which had found for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and ordered that the case be reheard en banc. In this case, the school had revoked the status of a Christian student group because the school objected to a policy that allegedly discriminated against LGBTQ students.
  • In Firewalker-Fields v. Lee, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of a Muslim inmate’s First Amendment Free Exercise claim. The court wrote that the jail’s policy of not allowing the plaintiff access to Friday Islamic prayers was reasonably related to security and resource allocation.
  • Thirteen Christian and Jewish leaders filed for a permanent injunction in the Missouri Circuit Court in Blackmon v. State of Missouri. The complaint seeks to bar the State of Missouri from enforcing its abortion ban, claiming that the ban violates the Missouri Constitution by failing to protect the free exercise of religion.
  • In Ference v Roman Catholic Diocese of Greensburg, a federal magistrate judge in the Western District of Pennsylvania recommended denying a motion to dismiss filed by the Catholic Diocese in response to a Title VII sex-discrimination lawsuit. The lawsuit was made by a Lutheran sixth-grade teacher in a Catholic school who was fired shortly after being hired when the school discovered that he was in a same-sex marriage.
  • A nurse practitioner filed suit in a Texas federal district court after being fired for refusing to prescribe contraceptives. The complaint in Strader v. CVS Health Corp alleges that CVS’s firing amounted to religious discrimination in violation of Title VII.
  • On January 11, 2023, the US House of Representatives passed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. This bill states that any infant born alive after an attempted abortion is a “legal person for all purposes under the laws of the United States.” Doctors would be required to care for those infants as they would any other child who was born alive.
  • Dr. Erika Lopez Prater, an art professor at Hamline University, is suing the University for religious discrimination and defamation after she was fired for showing an image of Muhammad to her Islamic art class.