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

  • Yeshiva University recently settled a protracted lawsuit with a student-led LGBT group by granting it formal recognition as a student organization, allowing it access to campus facilities and university funding. The lawsuit arose from the school’s refusal to recognize the group on religious grounds, whereas the group claimed such a refusal violated New York antidiscrimination statutes.
  • The state legislature of Kentucky recently passed a joint resolution directing the return of a monument displaying the Ten Commandments to the state’s Capitol Grounds. Temporarily removed during the 1980s due to construction, its return was enjoined by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, citing the now-defunct Lemon test as rendering the monument violative of the Establishment Clause. In light of recent Supreme Court jurisprudence declaring the Lemon test overruled, the state legislature voted to reinstate the monument.
  • A Catholic diocese and a Christian pregnancy center filed suit against the State of Illinois, challenging recent amendments to the Illinois Human Rights Act that prevents discrimination against employees based on their reproductive health choices. The plaintiffs allege that the amendments burden their Free Exercise rights by preventing them from making faith-based employment decisions, and coercing them to associate with individuals whose actions undermine their staunchly pro-life mission.
  • The Kansas state House of Representatives issued a condemnation against a “Black Mass” to take place on the state capitol grounds, citing its clear anti-Catholic animus and blatant disrespect to Christianity. The procession involves the use of a consecrated Catholic host, viewed as a clear mockery and distortion of the Catholic Eucharist, and an alleged affront against the religious sensibilities of “all people of good will.”
  • A New York federal district court ruled that a gender support plan that involved hiding a students social gender transition from her parents did not violate the Free Exercise or Due Process rights of her parents. The Court held that the plaintiff was free to exercise her religious and parental rights over her daughter in the household, and that a school policy that existed for the voluntary benefit of students does not endorse a religious message.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Marginalized Religions in the Roman Empire

Most are familiar with the Roman Empire’s treatment of Christianity–which, the conventional account goes, was uniquely bad. But, argues classicist K.P.S. Janssen in a book out this month from Oxford University Press, Marginalized Religion and the Law in the Roman Empire, Rome marginalized other religions as well, and treated them quite similarly in legal terms. Readers can evaluate the argument for themselves. Here’s the description from the Oxford website:

The Roman Empire’s approach to religion has traditionally been described in paradoxical terms. On the one hand, Rome has often been regarded as almost proverbially tolerant, as well as highly flexible in its dealings with the diverse range of religious cults and practices within its territories. On the other hand, the Roman religious landscape was not without its limits, and there were certain groups who found themselves, for one reason or another, on the outside. The legal interactions between these groups and the Roman authorities have largely been studied in isolation. In Marginalized Religion and the Law in the Roman Empire, K. P. S. Janssen instead takes a comparative approach, and investigates how members of various marginalized religious groups were embedded in, and interacted with, the wider Roman legal system. The legal positions of private diviners, Jewish communities and early Christians are compared and contrasted to provide a broader perspective on the legal treatment of marginalized religion in the Roman world. Janssen argues that the known interactions between these respective groups and the Roman authorities are best understood within the wider context of Roman law and administration, and that they furthermore shared a number of important characteristics. While the treatment these groups received was certainly not in all respects identical, the procedural, socio-political, and ideological mechanisms that underpinned the relevant legal measures were nonetheless conspicuously similar.

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

  • The Justice Department recently reached a settlement with a township in Pennsylvania on behalf of group of Old-Order Amish residents who were penalized for failing to connect to the town’s sewage system and placing permanent outhouses on their property. The Justice Department brought suit under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), and the settlement requires the Township to exempt certain households, as well as forgive any outstanding liens or fines arising from the violations.
  • President Trump issued an executive order intended to combat antisemitism, reaffirming Executive Order 13899 issued during his prior administration.
  • A court in Ukraine recently suspended the evictions of Orthodox monks from the Kiev Caves Lavra Monestary, among the most famous of Orthodox monasteries in Ukraine and spiritually significant to Orthodox Ukrainians and Russians. The monastery has been state-owned since the Soviet era, and the Brotherhood’s contract with the State of Ukraine was terminated as part of a general trend of discrimination against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church/Moscow Patriarchate, partially in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
  • In Little v. Los Angeles County Fire Department, a California federal district court allowed an Evangelical Christian lifeguard’s free exercise and Title VII claims to proceed in a case seeking a religious accommodation to displaying a pride flag on his lifeguard stand.
  • US Catholic Bishops have petitioned believers to urge their members of Congress to resume foreign aid programs recently suspended by the Trump administration.
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Here are some important law-and-religion stories from around the web:

  • An insurance worker from Michigan was awarded a twelve-million dollar judgment against her former employer after she was terminated for refusing to adhere to a private mandatory-vaccination requirement on religious grounds. It seems likely that the insurance company will appeal the judgment, considering the jury’s proportionately-large award of ten-million dollars in punitive damages.
  • In Ex parte Halprin, a Texas appellate court granted a new trial to a Jewish inmate who was sentenced to death following the murder of a police officer responding to the robbery of a Dick’s Sporting Goods. The Court found that the trial judge’s decision was based in large part on antisemetism, citing various out-of-court statements brought by witnesses that showed a clear animus against the defendant’s Jewish heritage.
  • In Union Gospel Mission of Yakima, Wash. v. Ferguson, a Washington federal district court granted a preliminary injunction preventing the state of Washington from applying its antidiscrimination laws to homeless shelters run by a Christian organization. The organization sought to limit its hiring to coreligionists, while the government of Washington claims religious exemptions to antidiscrimination statutes only apply in the context of ministerial hirings.
  • In Wexler v. City of San Diego, a California federal district court rejected the claim of an Orthodox Jewish man that the City of San Diego discriminated against his exercise of religion by allowing his eviction on the Sabbath. The Court found that because the evictors were not state actors, and because state laws in place facilitating the eviction process were neutral and generally applicable, the Plaintiff’s Religious Exercise Claim must fail.
  • In Furqua v. Raak, the Ninth Circuit reinstated the free exericse and equal protection claims of a self-described Christian Israelite who was refused Kosher meals for Passover after the prison chaplain claimed that any such religious requirement for a Christian was erroneous. The Court held that because the Plaintiff was denied an accomodation based on the subjective theological assessment of the chaplain, as opposed to a neutral and valid procedural rule, a reasonable trier of fact might find that he was refused an accomodation on account of religious discrimination.
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Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

  • In Solliz v. Knox County, Tennessee, a Muslim woman filed suit after she was required by a Knox County sheriff to remove her hijab for a booking photo following her arrest. The complaint alleged violations of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and the Tennessee Preservation of Religious Freedom Act.
  • A Ukrainian court has extended the detention of an Orthodox bishop for two months after he was arrested for allegedly revealing army positions to the public in a sermon, having mentioned the presence of a road block that prevented access to a local monastery. The bishop was denied the possibility of posting bail, and the checkpoints in question were removed prior to the publication of his sermon online.
  • A petition for certiorari was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond, after the Supreme Court of Oklahoma declared the certification of a Catholic-sponsored charter school violative of the state’s constitution and the Establishment Clause. The petition states that the exclusion of religious schools from the state’s charter program violates the Free Exercise Clause, and that the mere funding of religious schools by the state does not constitute state action.
  • The recently-passed Abortion Services Act in Scotland threatens prosecution against anyone praying within a 200-meter radius of an abortion facility, including within their own homes, if they can be seen or heard within the zone, and act in an intentional or reckless manner. Guidance provided by the government to facilitate compliance lists silent vigils and religious preaching as potentially actionable offenses, if conducted intentionally and recklessly.
  • The University of California has continued to deny wrongdoing following a California federal court’s order mandating a variety of measures to prevent the exclusion of Jewish students from parts of campus. The University claims responsibility lies with actors unaffiliated with the school, whereas the plaintiffs maintain the school’s complicity via its failure to act in the face of clear religious discrimination against its students.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Rome & Israel: Rivals in Law

The civilizational conflict between Rome and Israel in antiquity is much discussed. A new book from Princeton, Jews and Their Roman Rivals: Pagan Rome’s Challenge to Israel, maintains that the conflict was partly about law–specifically, whose law was superior. Looks very interesting. The author is French scholar Katell Berthelot (Aix-Marseille University). Here’s the description from the Princeton website:

Throughout their history, Jews have lived under a succession of imperial powers, from Assyria and Babylonia to Persia and the Hellenistic kingdoms. Jews and Their Roman Rivals shows how the Roman Empire posed a unique challenge to Jewish thinkers such as Philo, Josephus, and the Palestinian rabbis, who both resisted and internalized Roman standards and imperial ideology.

Katell Berthelot traces how, long before the empire became Christian, Jews came to perceive Israel and Rome as rivals competing for supremacy. Both considered their laws to be the most perfect ever written, and both believed they were a most pious people who had been entrusted with a divine mission to bring order and peace to the world. Berthelot argues that the rabbinic identification of Rome with Esau, Israel’s twin brother, reflected this sense of rivalry. She discusses how this challenge transformed ancient Jewish ideas about military power and the use of force, law and jurisdiction, and membership in the people of Israel. Berthelot argues that Jewish thinkers imitated the Romans in some cases and proposed competing models in others.

Shedding new light on Jewish thought in antiquity, Jews and Their Roman Rivals reveals how Jewish encounters with pagan Rome gave rise to crucial evolutions in the ways Jews conceptualized the Torah and conversion to Judaism.

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Around the Web

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

  • A petition for certiorari was filed in Apache Stronghold v. United States after the Ninth Circuit refused to enjoin the government from transferring federally-owned land to a copper company. The land is alleged to have significant spiritual significance to the Apache Nation, and the petitioners claim violations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
  • The Ukrainian Supreme Court decided to formally ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, the largest religious organization in Ukraine, after years of church confiscations and harassment of believers. The law bans all religious organizations with ties to Russia, and gives the Church nine months to either merge with a mostly-unrecognized nationalist church, or formally disavow all of its connections with the Russian Orthodox Church.
  • In Edison v. South Carolina Department of Education, the South Carolina Supreme Court held that a state scholarship for private school students violates the State’s Constitution, which prohibits public funds to be used for the direct benefit of religious or private educational institutions. The program allowed beneficiaries to use the state-provided scholarship funds to pay for their private school tuition.
  • The Tenth Circuit reversed the dismissal of a discrimination claim brought by a school administrator, who was fired after complaining about the depiction of Christians in a school play. Although the Court said that the Plaintiff’s words were not protected as they were made in the course of performing his official duties, it reversed due to sufficient facts being raised that gave rise to an inference of discrimination.
  • The Ninth Circuit held that a municipal law mandating tree-trimming did not violate the Free Exercise rights of a resident who claimed his religious and spiritual beliefs were substantially burdened by the regulation. The Court held that the Free Exercise Clause does not relieve an individual of the duty to comply with a neutral law of general applicability.
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Around the Web

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

  • In Queens, NY, statues depicting Christ and the Virgin Mary were vandalized and decapitated outside of a Catholic Church, resulting in the perpetrator being charged with a hate crime. The incident took place outside of Holy Family Catholic Church in Fresh Meadows, Queens, with the attack being fully recorded by the church’s camera.
  • The Center for Religion, Culture, & Democracy recently released the 2023 iteration of their Religious Liberty in the United States survey, which measures each state’s statutory protections against religious discrimination. West Virginia finished last, whereas Illinois finished first, providing an insight into how cultural norms can misalign with formal legal protections.
  • In Chino Valley Unified School System v. Newsom, a California school district sued the state of California, claiming that recent legislation prohibiting parental notification of a child’s gender transition violated parents’ free exercise rights.
  • In Behrend v. San Francisco Zen Center, Inc., a Buddhist novice’s disability discrimination suit was dismissed due to the ministerial exception doctrine.
  • In L.F. v. M.A., a New York state trial court held that a Coptic Orthodox wedding was sufficient to render a couple civilly married for the purposes of a divorce action. The court held that the belief of both parties, as well as testimony from the officiating bishop, were enough to overcome the lack of formal marriage license.
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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.
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Around the Web

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.