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Around the Web

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

  • Bishop James Massa, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Doctrine, responded to Vice President Vance’s recent criticism of Pope Leo XIV’s Palm Sunday Homily, emphasizing that “When Pope Leo XIV speaks as supreme pastor of the universal Church, he is not merely offering opinions on theology, he is preaching the Gospel and exercising his ministry as the Vicar of Christ.”
  • This week, the Justice Department Office of Legal Policy’s Weaponization Working Group published a 37-page report which concluded, in part, that “the Biden DOJ ‘engaged in biased enforcement of the FACE Act’ and ‘pursued more severe charges and significantly harsher sentences for peaceful pro-life defendants than violent pro-abortion defendants.'”
  • In a press release following the final hearing of the President’s Religious Liberty Commission, Chairman Dan Patrick rejected the notion that the First Amendment requires a total separation of church and state.
  • Ohio Attorney General David Yost has filed suit seeking to prevent Hebrew Union College (HUC) from closing its 150-year-old Cincinnati rabbinical school.
  • The Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne and Rosary Hill Home, a hospice care facility in New York, filed suit in a New York federal district court challenging New York’s requirements for care of transgender patients.
  • On April 14th, a settlement was reached between the Coast Guard and three Coast Guard members who had brought a class action after they were denied religious exemptions from the military’s COVID vaccine mandate. Among other things, the Agreement requires the Coast Guard to remove references in personnel records of service members’ decision to remain unvaccinated.
Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit against the state’s Higher Education Board claiming that the state’s work-study program’s requirement that work be provided in ‘nonsectarian activities’, violates the Free Exercise clause. 
  • The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal by a Christian school that argued that its free speech rights were violated when it was barred from playing a prayer over the loudspeaker at a football game. 
  • In Pritchard v. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois, the 9th Circuit remanded a suit alleging that Blue Cross is liable under the anti-discrimination portion of the Affordable Care Act for enforcing a religious-based exclusion regarding coverage of gender dysphoria. 
  • The New York Times reports on a surge of interest among younger Americans, especially young men, in Orthodox Christianity.  
  • In Jeanpierre v. Trump, a Utah district court dismissed a lawsuit by the founder of Black Flag, a religious organization, claiming that the President’s Executive order infringed his Free Exercise rights. 
Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • The 9th Circuit rejected claims that a fire department in Washington State violated Title VII and state law when they refused to accommodate employees’ request for religious exemptions from the state’s Covid vaccine mandate for all healthcare providers.
  • The 6th Circuit affirmed the dismissal of claims that an Ohio school’s policy on the use of communal bathrooms by transgender students violated the free exercise rights of Muslim and Christian students and parents.
  • Two families field suit in a Massachusetts federal district court challenging a policy of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families that would require foster parents to agree to “support, respect, and affirm the foster child’s sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.” The families assert that the policy unconstitutionally forces them to “speak against their core religious beliefs,” regulates speech based on content and viewpoint, and is discriminatory towards religious persons.
  • A California federal district court granted summary judgment to a Jehovah’s Witness who wished to attach an Addendum to the oath she was required to take as an employee of the State Controller’s Office, as she believed the oath, as currently written, violated her religious beliefs.
  • A New Mexico federal district court held that two members of a healthcare sharing ministry have standing to challenge an order barring them from operating in the state on free exercise grounds.
  • Senate Bill 11, passed by the Texas legislature in May 2025, establishes a structure that school districts may adopt to provide a daily prayer service and reading of the Bible/other religious text in school with parental consent. The bill took effect on September 1st, and Texas AG Ken Paxton promptly issued a press release in which he “encourages children to begin with the Lord’s Prayer[.]”
  • Following the tragic shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Jason Adkins, the executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference, appeared on “EWTN News In Depth,” where he called out state lawmakers for ignoring the pleas of Minnesota Catholic leaders for security funding for local nonpublic schools.

Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • A federal district judge ruled in Loe v. Jett that colleges that require students to sign statements of faith cannot be excluded from a state funding program. 
  • The Department of Health and Human Services is exerting more pressure on the state of West Virginia to recognize religious exemptions regarding the state public school system’s vaccine requirements. 
  • In Miller v. Civil Rights Division, a petition for certiorari was filed in the case regarding California’s anti-discrimination provisions. 
  • A teacher at a Connecticut school remains suspended from teaching for refusing to hide her crucifix in the classroom, sparking a legal battle. 
  • In New Jersey, a town has abandoned construction plans, which would have required seizing church property through eminent domain. 
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Around the Web

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

Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • In Frankel v. Regents of the University of California, the federal government and University of California reached a settlement regarding Anti-Semitism charges.
  • In Jordan v. Rubio, a D.C. federal district court found that the State Department violated RFRA by denying the plaintiff a passport when she refused to provide a birth certificate for religious reasons.
  • In United States v. Safehouse, the 3rd Circuit held that RFRA and the Free Exercise clause apply to corporate entities that exercise religion. 
  • In Kane v. City of New York, petition for certiorari was filed where the 2nd Circuit affirmed denial of religious exemptions for Covid vaccine mandates on public school staff. 
  • Two state tuition assistance programs in Virginia have denied grants to various students pursuing educational programs based on religious training.
  • In Washington, a federal court blocked a law that would require priests to face jail time or break the “seal of confession” regarding reports of abuse. 
Posted on by Mark Movsesian

New Paper at SSRN: “Status, Conduct, Belief, and Message”

And, continuing the wedding vendor theme from the last post, my draft paper on the wedding vendor cases, “Status, Conduct, Belief, and Message,” is now available for downloading on the SSRN site. The paper will appear in a forthcoming symposium edition of the Chicago-Kent Law Review. Comments welcome! Here’s the abstract:

This essay explores the constitutional and cultural tensions underlying the “wedding vendor cases,” in which small business owners decline from religious conviction to provide services for same-sex weddings. Litigants often invoke conceptual distinctions among status, conduct, belief, and message, but these distinctions are too indeterminate to resolve the cases in a principled way. The ultimate question is whether LGBT rights should override religious and expressive freedoms in the marketplace. In two recent wedding vendor cases, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission and 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the Court has avoided addressing this fundamental question directly. Instead, the Court has issued narrow rulings based on specific facts and party stipulations, thereby limiting the broader implications of its decisions. While this strategy sacrifices doctrinal clarity and leaves lower courts grappling with uncertainty, it also helps avoid exacerbating cultural polarization on an intensely divisive issue. In the current political climate, incremental case-by-case adjudication—a sort of “passive virtues” approach—may represent a prudent judicial strategy, even if it leaves both sides of the cultural divide dissatisfied.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Movsesian Interviewed on the Wedding Vendor Cases

I was delighted to join my friend and former colleague, Marc DeGirolami, and my friend and Marc’s current colleague, Kevin Walsh, as a guest last week on their excellent podcast, Sub Deo. We discussed the Supreme Court’s recent wedding vendor cases, Masterpiece Cakeshop and 303 Creative. I have a draft on the subject on the SSRN site and thought I’d heard everything about the cases, but Marc and Kevin came up with new and profound questions for me to think about. It was great fun and I thank Marc and Kevin for the opportunity to kick around some ideas. The link is here:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-23-in-which-we-reflect-on-the-legal-categories/id1736221891?i=1000704913852

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Video on Chicago-Kent Panel

The panel on religious exemptions from the Chicago-Kent Law Review symposium in which I participated with Stephanie Barclay and Laura Underkuffler is now available on YouTube. Thanks again to the organizers for inviting me. The symposium will appear in print later this year. Meanwhile, keep an eye out for the appearance of the Justice Souter bobblehead at 29:05!

Posted on by L&R Forum

Around the Web

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

  • In Swiech v. Board of Education for the Sylvania City School District, an Ohio state appellate court affirmed the dismissal of a suit brought by an elementary school student’s mother, which claimed that differential bussing violated her free exercise rights.
  • Various Christian and Jewish organizations have sued the Department of Homeland Security in a D.C. federal district court over the rescission of the Sensitive Locations Policy, which limited immigration actions in places of worship.
  • In Zubik v. City of Pittsburgh, a federal district court in Pennsylvania barred the city of Pittsburgh from designating a closed Catholic church as a historic structure.
  • In Higgs v. Farmor’s School, Britain’s Court of Appeals held that the termination of a schoolteacher’s employment due to Facebook posts related to Christian beliefs was a violation of the Equality Act of 2010.  
  • In Calvary Temple Church of Evansville Inc. v. Kirsch, the Indiana Supreme Court provided a broad interpretation of a state statute which partially shields non-profit religious organizations from tort liability.