Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • In Toor v. Berger, four Sikh recruits filed suit against the Marine Corps seeking an accommodation that would allow them to wear religious beards and turbans while serving.
  • In Riley v. Hamilton County Government, a Tennessee federal district court refused to dismiss an Establishment Clause claim brought against a Deputy Sheriff who failed to intervene when another Deputy Sheriff coerced the plaintiff into participating in a Christian baptism during a traffic stop.
  • A Virginia school board prohibited a group of student-athletes at Blacksburg High School from wearing “Pray for Peace” shirts in support of Ukraine during pre-game warm-ups on the ground that the shirts are “political” and “religious.”
  • Shawnee State University has agreed to pay $400,000 in damages plus attorney’s fees after the Sixth Circuit held that the University violated the free exercise rights of a philosophy professor by mandating that the Professor use students’ preferred gender pronouns.
  • The Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem has denounced restrictions that would limit the annual Holy Fire ceremony to 1,000 people inside the church, with 500 allowed on the church’s grounds. The Patriarchate claims that the restrictions imposed by Israeli officials infringe on their religious liberty.
  • A 76-year-old woman is seeking to overturn a fine she received for taking a “solitary prayer walk” during a COVID-19 lockdown in England.
Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • In Austin v. U.S. Navy Seals 1-26, the Supreme Court, by a vote of 6-3, stayed a Texas district court’s order that barred the Navy from considering the COVID-19 vaccination status of service members who object to the vaccine on religious grounds in making decisions regarding deployment, assignment, and operations. 
  • The Supreme Court denied review in Brysk v. Herskovitz, in which the Sixth Circuit had dismissed a suit brought by synagogue members against anti-Israel picketers who have picketed services at the Beth Israel Synagogue since 2003.
  • In Keister v. Bell, the Eleventh Circuit rejected a challenge brought by a traveling evangelical preacher against the University of Alabama after the University prohibited the preacher from setting up a banner, passing out literature, and preaching on a campus sidewalk because he did not have a permit. The court found the sidewalk was a limited public forum and thus the University could impose reasonable, viewpoint-neutral restrictions.
  • In Wagner v. Saint Joseph’s/Candler Health Systems, Inc., a Georgia federal district court held that a hospital did not violate Title VII after it fired an Orthodox Jewish employee for taking seven days off to observe the Fall Jewish holidays.
  • In Denton v. City of El Paso, a Texas federal magistrate judge concluded that the plaintiff’s First Amendment rights were violated by a city policy that prohibited the plaintiff from proselytizing at the Downtown Art and Farmers Market.
  • A Christian doctor, who lost his job for refusing to use patients’ preferred pronouns, will appear before a tribunal in the United Kingdom this week to challenge a ruling that held that biblical beliefs on gender are “incompatible with human dignity.”
  • In Christian Religious Organization of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the NKR v. Armenia, the European Court of Human Rights held that refusal by Nagorno Karabakh to register Jehovah’s Witnesses as a religious organization amounts to a violation of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • The Supreme Court has relisted two cases involving religious exercise claims, Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission v. Woods and Hedican v. Walmart Stores East, L.P., for its upcoming conference.
  • A Kansas teacher filed suit against her school district superintendent, board members, and principal after being suspended for refusing to use a student’s preferred name due to her religious beliefs.
  • In Heras v. Diocese of Corpus Christie, a Texas appellate court affirmed the dismissal of two priests’ defamation suits on ecclesiastical abstention grounds.
  • Ohio Governor signed into law Senate Bill 181, which allows students to wear religious apparel while competing in athletic competitions or extracurricular activities.
  • In Resham v. State of Karnataka, a 3-judge panel of the High Court of the Indian state of Karnataka upheld a ban on hijabs in schools and colleges. The Court stated that the “wearing of hijab by Muslim women does not form a part of essential religious practice in Islamic faith.”
  • Quebec’s new Bill 21 bans Canadians working as teachers, lawyers, police officers, and more from wearing religious symbols such as crosses, hijabs, turbans and yarmulkes.
  • Israel’s Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau, in a letter to Israel’s attorney general, has proposed setting up a special religious court to assist the expected 30,000 plus Ukrainian refugees.
Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • In St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church v. City of Brookings, a church filed suit in an Oregon federal district court challenging a city ordinance that limits the church from offering free meals to the needy more than two days per week.
  • In Buck v. Hertel, Michigan agreed to settle with St. Vincent Catholic Charities in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia.  The state agreed to pay attorneys’ fees of $550,000 and not to terminate the contract with the licensed child placement agency because of their religious requirements.
  • In Navy Seal 1 v. Biden, a Florida federal district court issued a temporary restraining order enjoining the military from enforcing its COVID-19 vaccination mandate against two service members who were denied religious exemptions.
  • In Divine Grace Yoga Ashram Inc. v. County of Yavapai, an Arizona federal district court rejected a RLUIPA claim that the county’s permit requirement violates the “equal terms” provision of RLUIPA.
  • The EEOC announced that Wellpath, a provider of health services, agreed to settle a religious discrimination claim brought by a nurse who lost her job after requesting a religious accommodation that would allow her to wear a scrub skirt instead of pants to work. Wellpath agreed to pay the nurse $75,000 and provide anti-discrimination training and a notice of rights to employees.
  • The City of Louisville has agreed to pay Officer Matt Schrennger, Kentucky police officer, $75,000 to settle his lawsuit after he was punished for praying in front of an abortion clinic while in uniform, but off-duty.
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Movsesian on Courts’ Responses to COVID Restrictions

I’m happy to announce that my essay, “Law, Religion, and the COVID-19 Crisis,” is now available in the Journal of Law and Religion (Cambridge). The essay discusses courts’ responses to COVID restrictions on public worship worldwide, and what the response of American courts indicates about our deep polarization in this country. Here’s the abstract:

This essay explores judicial responses to legal restrictions on worship during the COVID-19 pandemic and draws two lessons, one comparative and one relating specifically to U.S. law. As a comparative matter, courts across the globe have approached the problem in essentially the same way, through intuition and balancing. This has been the case regardless of what formal test applies, the proportionality test outside the United States, which expressly calls for judges to weigh the relative costs and benefits of a restriction, or the Employment Division v. Smith test inside the United States, which rejects judicial line-drawing and balancing in favor of predictable results. Judges have reached different conclusions about the legality of restrictions, of course, but doctrinal nuances have made little apparent difference. With respect to the United States specifically, the pandemic has revealed deep divisions about religion and religious freedom, among other things—divisions that have inevitably influenced judicial attitudes toward restrictions on worship. The COVID-19 crisis has revealed a cultural and political rift that makes consensual resolution of conflicts over religious freedom problematic, and perhaps impossible, even during a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • In St. Augustine School v. Underly, the Seventh Circuit sent back to the district court a suit challenging Wisconsin’s refusal to provide bus transportation to students at St. Augustine School, a private religious school. The court concluded that the decision to provide transportation was not justified by neutral and secular considerations.
  • The Eighth Circuit heard oral arguments in Religious Sisters of Mercy v. Becerra. Below, a North Dakota federal district court granted various Catholic-affiliated health care entities with an injunction prohibiting the enforcement of anti-discrimination laws against them in connection with providing coverage for transgender procedures.
  • In Downtown Soup Kitchen v. Municipality of Anchorage, an Alaska federal district court refused to grant injunctive relief to the Hope Center, a faith-based women’s shelter, after a new public accommodation law would require them to provide housing to trans-identifying women. The court concluded that since the city does not consider the Hope Center a public accommodation the center could not demonstrate a credible threat of enforcement.
  • Suit was filed in Virginia state trial court by parents challenging the Albemarle County School Board’s Anti-Racism Policy and the associated curriculum alleging religious discrimination.
  • In Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe v. U.S. Department of the Interior, the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe brought suit alleging that the new Dixie Meadows geothermal energy project will negatively impact the Dixie Meadows hot springs and the surrounding landscape and thus, violate their members’ sincerely held religious beliefs.
  • China has barred the chair, vice-chair, and two commissioners of the U.S. Commission on the International Religious Freedom from entering China.

Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • In Doe v. San Diego Unified School District, a California federal district court denied a temporary restraining order in a suit brought by a high school student and her parents objecting to the school district’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate which did not provide religious exemptions.
  • In Payne-Elliott v. Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis, an Indiana state appellate court reversed the dismissal of a suit by a former Catholic high school teacher. The teacher claimed that the Archdiocese intentionally interfered with his employment after he entered into a same-sex marriage.
  • In Seal I v. Biden, a Florida federal district court deferred ruling on a motion for a preliminary injunction sought by military service members seeking religious exemptions from the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
  • The U.S. State Department published the 2021 designation of countries and non-state actors that are major violators of religious freedom.
  • The city of Philadelphia agreed to pay Catholic Social Services a $2 million settlement and reinstate their foster care contract after the Supreme Court, in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, unanimously found that the city had discriminated against the group due to their religious beliefs.
  • The EEOC announced that Greyhound lines has agreed to pay a $45,000 settlement after a Muslim woman brought a religious discrimination suit. The woman was accepted into the driver training program but was later told that she could not wear her religious garments.
Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

  • The Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments in Slockish v. U.S. Department of Transportation. The plaintiffs are members of a federally-recognized tribe and allege that the government knowingly destroyed a sacred religious site during a highway construction project.
  • The Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments in Orr v. Christian Brothers High School. The issue on appeal is whether a California Catholic school can use the ministerial exception in response to claim of racial discrimination.
  • In M.P. v. New Hampshire School Administrative Unit 16, a Catholic teenager brought suit against his New Hampshire public school district after being suspended for refusing to conform to the school’s “preferred gender pronoun policy.” The student claims that the policy penalizes students who, out of religious conviction, decline to follow the policy.
  • In Johnson v. Cody-Kilgore Unified School District, a Nebraska federal district court allowed a group of Native American parents to move forward with their lawsuit against a school for cutting their children’s hair in violation of their religious traditions.
  • A Virginia teacher, who was placed on leave for objecting to a school district’s “preferred pronoun policy” on religious grounds, has agreed to a settlement. The school will reinstate the teacher, remove any reference to his suspension from his file, and pay attorney’s fees.
  • Six U.S. Congress members wrote to the Commission for International Religious Freedom expressing concern after prosecutors in Finland pressed charges against a Protestant bishop for publicly expressing traditional teachings on marriage and sexuality.
  • A German pastor was found guilty of “aiding and abetting an unauthorized resident” and sentenced to two years probation after housing an Iranian refugee in one of his churches. The pastor plans to appeal this decision claiming that his faith required him to help the refugee.
Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Ramirez v. Collier. A Texas death-row inmate sought a stay of execution, arguing that his pastor should be allowed to lay hands on him as he receives a lethal injection. The Fifth Circuit affirmed a refusal to grant the stay of execution.
  • In Resurrection School v. Hertel, the Sixth Circuit granted en banc review to reconsider a challenge by a group of Catholic parents’ to a COVID-19 mask mandate for schools. A panel previously held that the mandate did not violate the children’s free exercise rights.
  • In Byrd v. Haas, the Sixth Circuit reversed the dismissal of RLUIPA and free exercise claims brought by an inmate who sought to worship with other inmates and obtain items to be used in worship.
  • In Sambrano v. United Airlines, a Texas federal district court refused to issue a preliminary injunction against United Airlines’s practice of placing on unpaid leave employees who receive a religious exemption from the company’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
  • In Thoms v. Maricopa County Community College District, an Arizona federal district court granted a preliminary injunction to two nursing students who sought religious exemptions from a COVID-19 vaccination requirement.
  • The Department of Labor released a proposal to rescind a Trump Administration rule that broadly defines religious exemptions under the agency’s anti-discrimination requirements for government contractors and subcontractors.

Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • The Supreme Court declined to grant review in a lawsuit brought by a transgender man against a Catholic hospital after the hospital declined to perform a hysterectomy on the plaintiff. The Catholic hospital claimed that performing this procedure would have required it to violate its religious beliefs.
  • In Redeemed Christian Church of God (Victory Temple) Bowie, Md. v. Prince George’s County, the Fourth Circuit held that RLUIPA applied to a county council’s decision denying a water and sewer upgrade for property purchased by the plaintiff church. 
  • In We the Patriots USA, Inc. v. Hochul  and Dr. A v. Hochul, the Second Circuit vacated a temporary injunction issued against a statewide order mandating that medical professionals receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
  • In Texas v. Department of Labor, the Fifth Circuit issued a stay freezing the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate that would require workers at U.S. companies with at least 100 employees be vaccinated or be tested weekly.
  • In Abraham House of God and Cemetery, Inc. v. City of Horn Lake, two local religious leaders brought suit in Mississippi federal district court alleging that the defendant denied approval of a mosque site plan because of religious discrimination.
  • In Ratio Christi at The University of Nebraska-Lincoln v. Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska, a Christian student group filed a lawsuit against the University of Nebraska-Lincoln alleging viewpoint discrimination after the school denied funding for a guest speaker.
  • In Rojas v. Martell, an Illinois state trial court ruled that a county health department violated the conscience rights of a Catholic nurse who lost her job after refusing to provide patients with contraceptives or abortion referrals.
  • Texas voters approved a state constitutional amendment which provides that the state “may not enact, adopt, or issue a statute, order, proclamation, decision, or rule that prohibits or limits religious services.” This amendment was created in response to the numerous restrictions placed on religious gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic. 
  • The Illinois legislature passed SB 1169, which amends the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act to state that it is not a violation to impose any requirement intended to prevent the spread of COVID-19.