Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- The 11th Circuit held that a Florida high school’s policy preventing a transgender male from using the men’s bathroom violates the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX.
- The D.C. federal district court dismissed for lack of standing a suit filed by a pastor challenging a Black Lives Matter mural near the White House; the pastor claimed that the street painting violated both the Equal Protection Clause and the Establishment Clause.
- A Tennessee federal district court denied summary judgment in an EEOC claim that a Publix Supermarket refused to accommodate a Rastafarian employee’s religious beliefs requiring him to wear his hair in dreadlocks.
- A Virginia federal district court held that a case involving a high school teacher refusing to abide by a school policy requiring him to refer to a transgender male student using male pronouns had been incorrectly removed, and remanded the case to state court stating that it raises only state law issues.
- A New Jersey federal district court rejected a church’s challenge to the limits on indoor worship services imposed in New Jersey governor’s COVID-19 orders.
- A New York federal district court enjoined the Trump Administration’s rollback of anti-discrimination rules under the Affordable Care Act and Title IX, citing the Supreme Court’s recent Bostock decision and staying the new rules’ definition of discrimination on the basis of sex.
- A California federal magistrate judge recommended dismissing a challenge to the California governor’s COVID-19 orders that limited attendance at church service.
- In Australia, leaders of the Anglican and Greek Orthodox communities have joined Catholic Archbishop Anthony Fisher in raising “ethical concerns” about the Oxford University coronavirus vaccine, claiming the vaccine stems from an aborted human fetus.
- August 22 was designated by the United Nations as International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief.