Daily Archives: June 30, 2009

Christian Institute: “Dr Robbert van Oppenraaij headed the research team which published its findings in a report for the European Reproduction and Embryology Society. Dr van Oppenraaij said: ‘It can be concluded that a history of abortion is associated with an increased risk for premature delivery and very premature delivery.’”

CBC.ca: “The 26-year-old officer, a member of the Dakota Ojibwa Police Service, was beaten outside Teaser’s Burlesque Cabaret on Archibald Street shortly after 2 a.m. on Saturday. Winnipeg police say the officer and a group of friends got into a dispute with security staff at the bar.”

Bradenton Herald: “Deputies arrested three men on battery charges after a brawl with an employee of the Paper Moon strip club and another man, according to a Manatee County Sheriff’s Office report.”

Tyrel Linkhorn reports at LimaOhio.com: “City Council went forward in guaranteeing city employees protection from discrimination based on sexual orientation Monday, authorizing legistation that should be ready for review next month.”

OnlineCasinoAdvisory: “Investment firm Goldman Sachs told its clients to expect regulated, legal online gambling in the US sooner rather than later. The company wrote a note saying the implications of the potential revenue windfall will cause the passage of regulation, being more than lawmakers can afford to turn away.”

Sarah Oliver writes at Examiner.com: “South Carolina’s amendment is unconstitutional because it is not rationally related to any legitimate governmental interest. The amendment is so broad that it is not necessary to evaluate in detail any potential interest the state may have. I will compare South Carolina’s amendment to California’s to better illustrate this point.”

Washington Post: “The couple is among a group of parents challenging Minnesota’s practice of storing babies’ blood samples and allowing researchers to study them without their permission. The confrontation, and a similar one in Texas, has focused attention on the practice at a time when there is increasing interest in using millions of these collected ‘blood spots’ to study diseases.”

BBC: “A gene mapping test that can test embryos for almost any inherited disease could be available in the UK within a year, say researchers.”

Aaron J. Leichman reports in The Christian Post: “Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund had filed a petition with the court in March, asking the justices to review the case in hopes that they would ‘bring an end to this discrimination once and for all. Christian student groups shouldn’t be penalized for their beliefs,’ said ADF Senior Counsel Nate Kellum after the Christian legal group took their case to the high court. ‘Excluding a club simply because its members are religious is a clear violation of their First Amendment rights and the Equal Access Act.’”

CTV British Columbia reports: “The popular online classified service Craigslist is a clearing house for all kinds of products from tools to tickets. Now, youth workers and police are sounding the alarm about something else that’s for sale there — teenagers selling their bodies online.”

Associated Press: “Abortion opponents in Colorado want to try again to pass an amendment giving human rights to embryos.”

Amnesty International: “Amnesty International is gravely concerned that several opposition leaders detained in the wake of the 12 June elections may be facing torture, possibly to force them to make televised ‘confessions’ as a prelude to unfair trials in which they could face the death penalty.”

“A federal judge has temporarily blocked a state law restricting roadside signs for strip clubs and sex shops, meaning adult stores won’t have to take them down as expected later this week.”

“Two New Orleans men want a federal judge to rule that they have a fundamental right to a marriage license under the U.S. Constitution and international law despite Louisiana’s prohibition of same-sex marriages.”

Reuters offers this overview of the laws in various states.

LifeSiteNews: “In an interview with newspaper Svenska Dagbladet in March, a Swedish couple said they are refusing to disclose whether their two-and-a-half-year-old child, called ‘Pop’ in the media, is a boy or a girl. They said that their decision, made at the time of the child’s birth, was based on the feminist theory that ‘gender’ is a ‘cruel’ ‘social construct’ that forces children into artificial roles.”

David Bario writes at the American Lawyer on Law.com: “For others, particularly on the right, the advent of the Obama era may signal a pro bono renaissance. ‘When people think a president supports their values, they have a tendency to take a seat on the sidelines,’ says Glen Lavy, senior counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit that promotes conservative Christian causes. Last month the group held its annual litigation academy, a free week of training in exchange for a commitment from participating lawyers to devote 450 pro bono hours to one of its causes. Usually the course doesn’t fill up until nearly summer. This year, Lavy says, all 100 seats were booked by February.”

Heritage Foundation has produced this Fact Sheet #33 listing several reasons why the Obama Health Care Agenda will harm families.

Mike McKee writes on the Recorder (Law.com):”As much as he might have liked to see his landmark ruling favoring same-sex marriage stand, California Chief Justice Ronald George knew he was doing the “right thing” when he upheld Proposition 8 late last month. ”

Patrick Buchanan writes at CNSNews: “Darwinism is not science. It is faith. Always was.”

“A D.C. Superior Court judge has dismissed a motion filed by gay marriage opponents to stall the implementation of a new District law recognizing same sex unions performed elsewhere.”

Marc Thompson reports at WOOD TV: “The Kalamazoo City Commission voted unanimously to adopt an anti-discrimination ordinance Monday night. It will prohibit discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people when it comes to hiring, housing and other accommodations. The ordinance goes into effect in July.”

LifeSiteNews reports: “‘The life and health of women, especially minors, is more important than the political agenda of pro-abortion activist groups,” said ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman. ‘Minors are least of all in a position to make an informed decision about the life or death of a child, or even about their own safety. It is a lie that over-the-counter sales of this drug increase safety for women, including minors.’”

Jonathan Adler writes at the Volokh Conspiracy: Tom Goldstein has a thoughtful and interesting post on SCOTUSBlog summarizing the just-sortof-concluded Supreme Court term and looking forward to the next . . . I was particularly struck by his discussion of Scalia and Thomas . . . ”

Goldestein’s post is here.

Eugene Volokh has this post on the Volokh Conspiracy discussing Amador v. McSwain Elementary Union School District. ADF is involved in this litigation.

The Alliance Defense Fund honored six allied attorneys last week that have provided thousands of hours of dedicated, pro-bono service in defense of religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family. The value of those hours amounts to millions of dollars in free legal services that they have provided to clients in need.

AP: “Attorney General Henry McMaster said Tuesday he has requested the State Law Enforcement Division to review all of Sanford’s travel records to see if any laws have been broken.”

AP: “New York City’s bar association says Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is ‘highly qualified’ to be a justice.”

“Minnesota’s Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Democrat Al Franken is the winner of the state’s Senate race and should be awarded a certificate of election, paving the way for Franken to be seated.”

ReligionLink.com: “The equal treatment of Muslims under the law raises questions about the extent to which the United States can extend basic human rights and civil liberties to its citizens and permanent residents at a time of heightened tension over security. The issue also raises questions about how the country is assimilating its newest citizens. Will workplaces accommodate veiled Muslim women? Will judges allow Muslims to take an oath on the Quran ­- rather than the Bible? Are public schools willing to excuse Muslim students for taking absences during the two annual Muslim holidays?”

OneNewsNow reports: “As OneNewsNow recently reported, students from Chicago’s Nettlehorst Elementary School participated in Sunday’s ‘gay pride’ parade. School officials claim the school did not endorse the event, but said that some parents were allowing their children to march in the parade. Those parents were not barred from using the school’s name in the event, which Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family Institute contends amounts to a backdoor endorsement.”

CNN: “Levey is part of the ‘gayby boom’ generation. The 29-year-old management consultant is the son of a lesbian couple who chose to have a child through artificial insemination. He’s their only child. Critics of same-sex marriage say people such as Levey will grow up shunned and sexually confused. Yet he says he’s a ‘well-adjusted heterosexual’ whose upbringing proves that love, not gender, makes a family.”

LifeSiteNews reports on the latest video put together by Lila Rose and Live Action: “A Planned Parenthood counselor in Birmingham was caught on hidden camera telling an alleged 14-year-old statutory rape victim that the clinic “does sometimes bend the rules a little bit” rather than report sexual abuse to state authorities. This is the seventh Planned Parenthood clinic implicated in a multi-state child abuse scandal involving the deliberate and unlawful suppression of evidence of statutory rape.”

Google (AP): “Hundreds of gay rights supporters waved flags and danced past traffic during marches through three Indian cities Sunday to celebrate gay pride and call for the decriminalization of homosexuality in this deeply conservative country. The New Delhi parade passed near the Delhi High Court, which is reviewing a law that prohibits gay sex — and can punish it with up to 10 years in prison.”

NY Times: “Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a group that opposes gay rights initiatives, said Mr. Obama’s reluctance to push more assertively for gay rights reflected public opinion. ‘He’s given them a few minor concessions; they’re asking for more, such as “don’t ask, don’t tell” being repealed,’ Mr. Perkins said. ‘The administration is not willing to go there, and I think there’s a reason for that, and that is because I think the American public isn’t there.’”

Dan Gilgoff reports at his U.S. News & World Report God & Country blog: “As the White House readies its plan for finding “common ground” on reproductive health
issues and reducing the need for abortion, a major debate has emerged over how to package the plan’s two major components: preventing unwanted pregnancies and reducing the need for abortion.”

Liberty Counsel: “Today a federation of some of the largest faith-based organizations in the country gathered in the Nation’s capital to plan, strategize, and work together on common interests within the Judeo-Christian tradition to mobilize their grassroots constituencies and to communicate faith and values to the religious, social, cultural, and policymaking institutions. The constituents of these organizations are concerned about the spiritual, moral, cultural, and economic condition of the Nation. The Freedom Federation is a federation of individual, national, multi-ethnic and transgenerational organizations and leaders. The Freedom Federation is not a separate organization. It is a federation of organizations with large and unique constituencies that share common core values . . . ”

Delaware Daily County Times: “A former sixth-grade teacher at St. Bernadette of Lourdes School in Upper Darby got what a federal judge called “a huge break” after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography. U.S. District Judge Lawrence F. Stengel sentenced Salvatore Graci, 34, of Wallingford, to a day in prison and 10 years of supervised release and ordered him to register as a sex offender.”

Charisma R. v. Kristina S., No. 2009 SOS 3940 (Cal. App. June 26, 2009) begins: Charisma R. (Charisma) and Kristina S. (Kristina) were a same sex couple who began dating in July 1997, moved in together in August 1998, and …

The move . . . is the latest in an ambitious program of social change under Zapatero, who critics say is resolutely determined to destroy Spain’s Judeo-Christian ethical foundations, primarily by deconstructing the traditional family.

Christopher O. Tollefsen writes at Public Discourse: “Revelations about the infidelities of prominent social conservatives like South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Nevada Senator John Ensign have led many to mock advocates of public virtue who nonetheless succumb to personal vice. But what’s so bad about hypocrisy?”

AFP: “Al-Qaeda’s North Africa wing threatened on Tuesday to take revenge on France for its opposition to the burka, calling on Muslims to retaliate against the country, the US monitoring service SITE Intelligence reported. Earlier this month, President Nicolas Sarkozy said the burka, which covers the whole face, was not welcome in the strictly secular country.”

“ABBA’s ‘Dancing Queen’ filled the East Room, as more than 200 prominent gays and lesbians gathered for the first ever celebration of Pride month at the White House.”

One News Now: “The National Education Association will convene for their national meeting in San Diego July 1-6. Jeralee Smith, one of the co-founders of the NEA Conservative Educators Caucus, says one of the items her group has placed on the agenda is abortion.”

One News Now: “Obama acknowledged that many Americans still disapprove of homosexuality. ‘There are still fellow citizens, perhaps neighbors or even family members and loved ones, who still hold fast to worn arguments and old attitudes,’ he stated.”

“This term, justices reversed, at least partially, 94% of the Western appeals court’s rulings. Part of the reason, experts say, is the court is perceived as liberal and partial to the underdog.”

Catholic News Agency: “‘The life and health of women, especially minors, is more important than the political agenda of pro-abortion activist groups. Minors are least of all in a position to make an informed decision about the life or death of a child, or even about their own safety. It is a lie that over-the-counter sales of this drug increase safety for women, including minors,’ remarked ADF Legal Counsel Matt Bowman.”

Wendy Kaminer writing at Spiked Online: “If the relationship between screening group members and expressing a group ideal seems obvious (practically tautological), the ninth circuit court of appeals still managed to finesse it. In Truth v Kent School District, a three-judge panel justified the denial of official status to a high school bible club, Truth, by minimising the effect of the denial on the club’s First Amendment rights and magnifying the effect of the club’s exclusionary rules on other students. (Truth is represented by the Alliance Defense Fund, which is seeking Supreme Court review. FIRE has filed an amicus brief in support of Truth’s appeal.)”

Orlando Sentinel:

Holy Land Experience doesn’t want you to know when it schedules its required free day each year out of concern over a possible “uncontrollable situation.” . . .

Holy Land, owned by Trinity Broadcasting Network, is required to drop its normal $35 ticket price and offer free admission one day each year in exchange for a property-tax exemption that saves it about $300,000 annually, according to a 2006 state law designed to guarantee the exemption.

Hat tip: Religion Clause Blog

Religion Clause Blog reports that the Needville, Texas Independent School District is appealing a case involving a five year old boy who is challenging school hair length restrictions on grounds that they violate his Native American religious beliefs.

.A. v. Needville Independent School District

AP: “Liberal-leaning religious groups are launching radio ads in five states this week in which local pastors urge senators to back efforts to overhaul the nation’s health care system.”

Religion Clause Blog: In Bikur Cholim v. Suffern, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 54187 (SDNY, June 25, 2009), a New York federal district court refused to dismiss claims under RLUIPA and freedom of association claims challenging the denial of a zoning variance for a Suffern (NY) “Shabbos House.”

“Alliance Defense Fund attorney Brian Raum told TAS that Washington, D.C. demonstrates the disconnect between voters and government officials on the marriage question. With California’s Proposition 8 and over a dozen similar ballot initiatives, the people have repeatedly affirmed the idea that marriage is between a man and a woman (though polls in a few states have recorded pluralities in favor of same-sex marriage). Based on this history, Raum said it is important to let the initiative process go forward.”

Lindsay Toler reports in the Seattle Times: “‘We’re willing to keep fighting if we need to,’ Chandler said. He said his group, the Alliance Defense Fund, will continue to research the case, but their clients have not yet decided whether to begin another trial. ‘It’s not dead,’ acknowledged Chuck Lind, general counsel for the Kent School District.”

SSRN: “Landmark cases such as R. v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd. and Syndicat Northcrest v. Amselem have established several tests to guide courts in their consideration of religious freedom. When taken in conjunction with the preamble to the Charter, and the protections in sections 2(a) and 15, courts and human rights tribunals can avoid the above errors and ensure the preservation of freedom of religion together with other fundamental Canadian values.”

SSRN: “Torn between their European origins and the appeal to values on the one hand and their reluctance – inspired by their own experience – to any forcible transfer of values on the other hand, a few Eastern European legal scholars (including Russian scholars) have offered some additional support for the interest-based and (neo-) Hobbesian conceptions of the international legal order, thereby challenging the mainstream liberal and constitutionalist conception of international law. Although different in many other respects, their interest-based conception of international law undeniably has an common denominator with that of those scholars who try to reconcile the undoubted capacity of international law to transform societies with those legal traditions of the world averse to anything that looks like a transfer of ‘Western values’. If this is true, the abovementioned Eastern European scholars have proven more ‘universalist’ than many of their Western European and American counterparts.”

SSRN: “This paper concludes by suggesting that the Supreme Court of India should take an ‘active,’ informed approach, while referring to international human rights norms, and should enforce international human rights norms by reading them into customary international law where needed; rather than its ‘passive’ approach of referring to international human rights norms for statutory interpretations. The Supreme Court should look at the relationship between international and domestic legal norms as a ‘co-constitutive, or synergistic,’ and should utilize these norms actively as a participant in the dynamic process of developing international law. The Supreme Court must be able to apply customary law on human rights exhaustively and in a fully independent way, in particular, it must be able to verify that the violations of human rights recognized by customary international law are not committed by the executive. While the Supreme Court has been known for its judicial activism, it is time that it is also known for its informed approach and respect towards international human rights norms.”

SSRN: “In its concluding section, the Article argues that the politics of same-sex marriage are not just about creating an opportunity for more authentic behavior, but are more centrally about the control of the dramaturgical, dialogical, and dialectical possibilities of microperformances of marriage. It draws on sociologist Joseph Gusfield’s concept of reflexive social movements, in which individual identity as well as legal goals are at stake, and on feminist philosopher Nancy Fraser’s concept and critique of subaltern counterpublics. It suggests that the left critique of marriage is in part a critique of the politics of microperformances. Lastly, the Article turns to some of Judith Butler’s arguments about transgressive performances of gender, which also pose the question of identity politics in terms of reification and control of microperformances. That it gives Judith Butler the last word is ironic, since she does not believe that there is one.”

First Amendment Law Review: “In particular, the language of the WRFA ensures inevitable excessive entanglement of government and religion in the context of public employers and religious employees. The Act would accomplish this end by placing a near-absolute, affirmative burden of accommodation on employers where a workplace conflict arises due to an employee’s faith or beliefs. Its practical effects would essentially grant every individual employee status as a religious entity unto him or herself. This is especially problematic for public employers. The favorably heightened status of religious employees under the WRFA necessarily involves highly subjective standards of personal faith.”

McGeorge Law Review: “Prison officials have the ‘often thankless job of preserving security in a potentially explosive setting.’ This duty does not, however, permit the imposition of unlimited regulations and deprivations in the name of security, especially when constitutional rights are at issue. Accordingly, when examining the legality of prison regulations, courts strike a balance between the security needs of prisons and the mandates of the Constitution. Attempts to standardize the religious materials in prison chapel libraries through the creation of approved book lists invoke this balancing test.”

First Amendment Law Review: “This article evaluates the standard that the Texas Supreme Court applied in Pleasant Glade Assembly of God v. Schubert. In that case, the Court expanded the scope of the Free Exercise protections to immunize churches and other religious institutions from tortious liability when claims of intangible damages arise out of actions associated with the church’s belief system, regardless of the physically assaulting nature of the church’s conduct, out of which the defendant’s injuries arise. This, I believe and will argue, is too expansive a view of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.”

“[T]his article reviews current Establishment Clause jurisprudence and offers an appropriate standard for the Court to adopt. Specifically, Part I reviews the history of the Establishment Clause, looking at how it was understood at its ratification, as well as its modern interpretation and current applications. Part II analyzes the Court’s recent decisions of McCreary and Van Orden, critiquing the current tests employed for Establishment Clause analysis. Finally, Part III advocates narrowing Establishment Clause analysis to its original parameters and reviewing those issues inappropriately subjected to Establishment Clause scrutiny under their proper constitutional provision: free speech.”

“Canvassing in detail the indexical language of the federal and state Constitutions, I argue that the Constitution is composed of language whose meaning is fixed at the time of the Founding.”

First Amendment Law Review: “This Article defends the political-divisiveness component of the entanglements prong. The political theory of pluralist democracy, the social science research documenting the power of religious identity, and the history of religious discrimination in the United States demonstrate that the importation of religious divisions into the political realm can thwart the pluralist democratic process.”

Western New England Law Review: “The ultimate conclusion of this Note is that the initial appellate decision took the proper approach to the issues presented by the Alliance. Both the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Supreme Court precedent support the right for mentally competent, terminally ill patients, with no other viable means of treatment, to make reasoned and informed decisions regarding their own treatment. If an individual elects to attempt to prolong his life by undergoing treatment with experimental medications, the FDA should not impose a barrier to access simply because it has not conclusively determined the safety and efficacy of the medication.”