Citizenship and Religion Archives - LAW AND RELIGION FORUM

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

In Wallbuilder Presentations v. Mark, a D.C federal court granted a preliminary injunction against the removal of advertisements on a public bus that indicated that the American founders were Christians. The Court found that a local transit guideline banning advertisements that attempt to influence the public on controversial issues was unreasonable and susceptible to the biases of those overseeing its enforcement.
In Jane Does 1-11 v. Board of Regents of the University of Colorado, the 11th Circuit found that a policy granting religious exemptions for vaccinations only to certain religions violated the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses. The Court rejected the university administration’s decision that only adherents of religions that expressly prohibit all immunizations may claim an exemption, holding that a government policy cannot use its own views of a belief’s legitimacy to judge whether it is sincerely held.
In Foothills Christian Ministry v. Johnson, a California federal court rejected a complaint by three churches against California’s Child Day Care Facilities Act which required all preschools to make acts of religious observation discretionary by the student’s parents. Because the Act allowed all registrants to reject the admission of any child whose parents refuse to allow their children to participate, the Court held that the plaintiffs lacked a cognizable injury.
In Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany v. Vullo, the NY Court of Appeals rejected a claim that the state’s religious exemption for mandatory coverage of medically necessary abortion was too narrow. The Court held that the state’s four-element test for qualification as a religious employer was generally applicable and therefore not subject to strict scrutiny, despite the alleged hardship of meeting the four elements.
A nondenominational church challenged a zoning objection made by the Town of Castle Rock, Colorado against the church’s use of an RV as temporary shelter for the homeless. The complaint alleges that the aforementioned objection violates the plaintiff’s Free Exercise Clause rights, citing multiple passages from Christian Scripture that mandate believers to tend to the homeless and hungry.

In January, Palgrave Macmillan will release “Islam and Secular Citizenship in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and France” by Carolina Ivanescu (independent scholar). The publisher’s description follows:

The past several years have seen many examples of friction between secular
European societies and religious migrant communities within them. This study combines ethnographic work in three countries (the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and France) with a new theoretical frame (regimes of secularity). Its mission is to contribute to an understanding of collective minority identity construction in secular societies. In addition to engaging the academic literature and ethnographic research, the book takes a critical look at three cities, three nation-contexts, and three grassroots forms of Muslim religious collective organizations, comparing and contrasting them from a historical perspective.

Carolina Ivanescu offers a thorough theoretical grounding and tests existing theories empirically. Beginning with the principle that religion and citizenship are both crucial aspects of religious migrants’ individual identities, she demonstrates the relevance of collective identity, which is shaped through articulations of belonging to geographical and ideological entities. This form of belonging, Ivanescu asserts, is filtered through the mechanisms of citizenship and religion in the modern social world.