Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- Sri Lanka banned approximately 200 Muslim clerics amid a security operation and investigation into the Easter Sunday bombings that killed more than 250 people.
- A largely Catholic mob attacked Muslim-owned shops in a Sri Lankan town bombed on Easter Sunday, prompting church authorities to call for calm and no further hostilities against Muslims in the area.
- Brunei announced that it will not impose the death penalty on those convicted of having gay sex following international condemnation over the country’s implementation of Sharia law.
- Connecticut Attorney General William Tong issued a formal opinion that it is legal for state lawmakers to eliminate the religious exemption for required immunizations.
- The New York Court of Appeals dismissed the Archdiocese of New York’s appeal of an earlier judgment allowing Venerable Fulton Sheen’s remains to be moved to the Cathedral of St. Mary in Peoria (IL), in accordance with his family’s wishes.
- A U.S. Air Force veteran filed a federal lawsuit claiming a Bible carried by a POW in WWII currently on display at the Manchester VA Medical Hospital (NH) violates the Establishment Clause.
- San Jacinto County (TX) lawmakers unanimously rejected the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s demand to remove four crosses from a county courthouse amid furor from hundreds of Christian locals.
- The Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund, a religious liberty advocacy group, is threatening to sue the Dieringer School District (WA) for urging teachers to bless Muslim students in Arabic during the holy month of Ramadan and give them preferential treatment.
- The principal of Sabold Elementary School in Springfield (PA) will no longer say “God Bless America” following the Pledge of Allegiance over the loudspeaker after the school district received a complaint from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
- Three Somali Muslim women filed charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claiming their employer, Amazon, discriminated against them because of their religion.
- Asia Bibi, the Christian woman acquitted of blasphemy after spending eight years on death row in Pakistan, has safely left the country for Canada to be reunited with her daughters after months of hiding in protective custody.
- Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law a fetal heartbeat bill, which bans abortion once a fetus’s heartbeat is detected, stating that his administration is prepared for a court fight and “will not back down.”
- A federal judge struck down a decades-old Virginia law that says only licensed physicians can perform first-trimester abortions, dismissing concerns about increasing the medical risks to women.
- The Alabama Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would make it a felony to perform an abortion except for in cases of rape and incest.
- The Louisiana Senate passed a fetal heartbeat bill containing a “trigger” clause in which the bill will only go into effect if courts uphold a similar law in Mississippi.
- Business leaders in Austin (TX) gathered on the steps of the state capital to announce their opposition to a proposed bill that would allow state licensed professionals to deny services on religious grounds.
- California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, as part of an investigation into clerical sex abuse, asked all 12 Catholic dioceses in the state to preserve files and documents that concern their compliance as mandatory reporters of child abuse to local law enforcement.
- A lawyer representing the victims of clerical sex abuse criticized the Archdiocese of Boston for not listing on its website the names of several priests who have faced accusations, including five clerics who are dead.
- Several Tennessee bishops signed a letter asking Gov. Bill Lee to halt four executions planned for this year.
- A twenty-nine-year-old Colorado man was sentenced to three years of probation for burglarizing a secretive polygamous compound in southwest South Dakota run by members of a Mormon splinter group known as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
- A twenty-one-year-old man who took off his clothes and urinated into a holy water baptismal while under the influence of meth pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges in North Dakota.
