Daily Archives: September 17, 2009

AP: “A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that sought to prevent a South Dakota school district from imposing a dress code.”

Citizen Link: “Some teachers in the St. John School District have disaffiliated with the Washington Education Association (WEA) and the National Education Association (NEA) because they no longer wanted to give money to causes they didn’t believe in.”

ADF attorney Steven Aden appeared on the Jody Hice Show to discuss “Personhood” Amendments.

The MP3 runs just over 17 minutes.

Related ADF Alliance Alert posts

MSNBC (AP): “[Personhood] Amendment language has been cleared, with petition drives under way, in Colorado, Mississippi, Montana and Nevada. Amendment language will be filed later this month in California and Florida.”

ADF attorney Doug Napier appeared on the Michael Medved Show to discuss this: NH court orders home-schooled child into government-run school.

The MP3 runs just over 33 minutes.

MSNBC: “U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests.”

C-FAM: “The European Parliament voted 349 to 218 today to condemn Lithuania for its “law on the protection of minors” which prohibits promotion of “homosexual, bisexual or polygamous relations” among children under 18 in the Baltic nation. Conservative critics contend that the measure, crafted in reaction to the domestic legislation of a sovereign member state pertaining to the family, oversteps the Parliament’s authority.”

Christian Post: “Episcopal Bishop Leo Frade intends to allow clergy in the Diocese of Southeast Florida to bless the unions of same-sex couples. The authorization will only apply to gay and lesbian couples who have been legally married, he says.”

Goldwater Institute: “In an era of burgeoning federal government power, state constitutions are full of untapped potential; many provide stronger protection of individual freedoms than does the federal constitution. But realizing that potential requires recognizing its existence and assessing which state constitutions offer the best opportunities for securing the principles of limited government. To that end, this report ranks each state in the United States according to its constitutional commitment to the principles of limited government from a classical liberal perspective.”

National Right to Life press release: “The bill contains provisions that would send massive federal subsidies directly to both private insurance plans and government-chartered cooperatives that pay for elective abortion. This would be a drastic break from longstanding federal policy, under which federal funds do not pay for elective abortions or subsidize health plans that cover elective abortions. For example, current law prohibits any of the over 250 private health plans that participate in the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program from paying for elective abortions, because these plans receive federal subsidies. These private plans cover over 8 million federal employees and dependents, including members of Congress.”

Associated Press: “The House voted Thursday to deny all federal funds for ACORN in a GOP-led strike against the scandal-tainted community organizing group that comes just three days after the Senate took similar action.”

The July and August 2009 editions of the Community Defense Reporter are now available online at the Community Defense Counsel.

ACLU: “The American Civil Liberties Union joined a broad coalition of religious, civil rights and health organizations today in signing a letter urging Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to withdraw an Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion approving of religious discrimination in hiring by religious groups receiving federal funds to carry out federal programs . . . The coalition letter to Attorney General Eric Holder is available online at: www.aclu.org/religion/gen/41040leg20090917.html”

LifeNews: “In apparent attempt to regain favor with pr-life Catholics upset that Notre Dame invited pro-abortion President Barack Obama to give its commencement address and gave him an honorary degree, university president John Jenkins says he will attend the 2010 March for Life.”

LifeSiteNews: “A new Canadian study has shown that abortion increases the risk of future premature pregnancies and low birth-weight babies; however, the author has refused to say that abortion should be avoided, instead calling for improved abortion techniques. Published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology . . . ”

Legal Blog Watch: “As a graduate of Boston College Law School, I was disappointed to read about BC Law Professor Scott T. Fitzgibbon’s starring role in an anti-gay marriage TV ad targeted at voters in Maine. Now that I’ve watched the ad and read more about it, I find it even more disappointing for the ways in which it distorts some of the underlying issues.”

“Dean Garvey’s entire approach is based on a fundamentally flawed conception of academic freedom.”

Religion Clause Blog: “Now, in C.F. v. Capistrano Unified School District, (CD CA, Sept. 15, 2009), a federal district court dismissed the remaining claim for nominal damages after finding that the teacher was entitled to qualified immunity.”

Religion Clause Blog: “In St. Louis (MO), some are arguing that a new downtown grocery store, Culinaria (owned by the Schunck’s grocery chain), should be subject to church-state separation requirements because more than half of its funding came from government sources.”

AP: “Seven residents of a heavily secured center for sex predators have been indicted on federal child porn charges.”

Religion Clause Blog: ‘In Classis of Central California v. Miraloma Community Church, (CA Ct. App., Sept. 15, 2009), a California Court of Appeals held that a local congregation of the Reformed Church in America lacked authority to amend its governing documents to disaffiliate from the national church in order to avoid a takeover by its hierarchical governing body, the classis . . . ”

ADF attorney Gary McCaleb appeared on the Jody Hice Show to discuss the harrassment of marriage defenders in Washington state and ADF efforts to stop that.

The MP3 runs just under 18 minutes.

ADF Media information: New hotline for Wash. Referendum 71 supporters who encounter retaliation

ProtectMarriageWA.com

Daily Briefing, The Columbus Dispatch: “Despite the strong anti-abortion position in the Republican National Committee’s platform, Chairman Michael Steele said last week that the party must be open to candidates who favor abortion rights.”

Law.com: “The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in a case of first impression that the protection of Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act extends beyond employees to independent contractors . . . Brown v. J. Kaz Inc. d/b/a Craftmatic of Pittsburgh . . . ”

Forbes (AP): “The city of Mulvane violated the First Amendment right to free speech of a woman who was escorted out of a council meeting by police after she tried to talk during a public forum over a proposed casino . . . ‘We are very pleased with the court’s decision that vindicated her rights,’ said Joel Oster, an Alliance Defense Fund attorney in Leawood, Kan.”

Hays Daily News (AP): “The city of Mulvane violated the First Amendment right to free speech of a woman who was escorted out of a council meeting by police after she tried to talk during a public forum over a proposed casino . . . The Alliance Defense Fund . . . said the decision sets a precedent not only in Mulvane but throughout the 10th Circuit federal courts and the United States.”

Bay Area Reporter: “A sought after Republican campaign adviser for three decades beginning in the 1970s, Fred Karger called it quits and retired nearly five and half years ago . . . In the process Karger has morphed into the main nemesis of the Alliance Defense Fund, an anti-gay group that has provided legal counsel to campaigns in numerous states against LGBT rights, and the National Organization for Marriage, a group helping to finance anti-gay ballot fights across the country . . . Timothy D. Chandler, an attorney with the Folsom, California-based Alliance Defense Fund, did not respond to a call seeking comment for this article. Chandler has subpoenaed Karger to appear at an October 13 deposition in the California case . . .”

ADF allied John Anthony Simmons appeared on WBFI radio with Ron Miller to discuss this: NH court orders home-schooled child into government-run school.

The MP3 runs just over 27 minutes.

More information:

www.ClearVictory.org

ADF National Litigation Academy

Home School Legal Defense Association

Prof. Fitzgibbon’s involvement prompted Dean John Garvey of Boston College Law School to issue a memorandum yesterday.

Christian Newswire (Pacific Justice Institute): “A San Francisco group billing itself as ‘the best in LGBT media’ is claiming hundreds of public schools in California have signed up to show its films and use accompanying discussion materials. One film features a boy ‘coming out’ by wearing his mother’s bikini . . . ”

A federal court ruled Wednesday that the Mulvane City Council violated the First Amendment rights of a citizen thrown out of a public hearing when she attempted to respectfully express her moral concerns about a proposed gambling casino.

Breitbart (AFP): “‘The number of sites devoted to child pornography worldwide is growing. The number of predators connected to the Internet at any one time is estimated to be 750,000,’ said Najat Maala, Special Rapporteur on the child prostitution and child pornography issue.”

Rachel M. Birnbach, Love Thy Neighbor: Should Religious Accommodations that Negatively Affect Coworkers’ Shift Preferences Constitute an Undue Hardship on the Employer Under Title VII? (September 13, 2009). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1472698

“This Note argues against those courts that have found that imposing on shift preferences of coworkers, outside the context of a collective bargaining agreement, amounts to preferential treatment. It asserts that protecting the mere shift preferences of other workers effectively reduces the duty to accommodate to a level far below what Congress could have intended when it included the duty to accommodate religious employees under Title VII. The Note concludes that preferential treatment of the religious employee exists only when imposition on the coworkers creates an economic burden on the employer or would require coworkers to take on additional physically dangerous tasks.”

Daniel Augenstein, Religious Pluralism Versus Social Cohesion? Normative Fault Lines of Human Rights Jurisprudence in Europe (September 15, 2009). U. of Edinburgh School of Law Working Paper No. 2009-23. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1473893

“This essay explores the tension between religious pluralism and social cohesion in European human rights jurisprudence. Comparing the German, French, and British interpretation of the ‘social cohesion limitation’ of freedom of religion I argue that, at the national level, concerns for social cohesion stem from negative and defensive societal attitudes towards religious diversity that are difficult to reconcile with the normative premises of religious pluralism in a democratic society.”

Courtney M. Cahill, Celebrating the Differences that Could Make a Difference: United States v. Virginia and a New Vision of Sexual Equality (September 15, 2009). Ohio State Law Journal, Forthcoming ; Roger Williams Univ. Legal Studies Paper No. 82. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1474050

“This Essay contends that Ginsburg’s celebration of difference in Virginia could, and indeed should, be a model for gay rights advocacy, and perhaps in time for a gay rights jurisprudence. Where that advocacy has remained stubbornly tethered to a no-differences paradigm, one that insists on a one-to-one correspondence between gays and straights notwithstanding the reality of difference that exists between those two groups, their intimate pairings, and the families, if any, that they share, Ginsburg’s celebration of gender difference both in and beyond Virginia cogently demonstrates that difference need not defeat, nor be an impediment to, equality claims in our constitutional order.”