Category Archives: Featured

How Appealing links to a report and the ruling in Dixon v. U. of Toledo.

Religion Clause Blog: In Korte v. United States Department of Health and Human Services, (SD IL, Dec. 14, 2012), an Illinois federal district court denied a preliminary injunction sought by a for-profit construction business and its controlling shareholders in a free exercise challenge to the contraceptive coverage mandate under the Affordable Care Act.  The court held that the exercise of religion is a purely personal right; corporations cannot exercise religion even though they may advance a belief system.

NY Times: Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina has chosen Representative Tim Scott to replace Jim DeMint in the United States Senate, according to three Republican officials. The move will make Mr. Scott the first black senator from the South since the late 19th century.

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUS Blog: Judges on the D.C. Circuit Court, the first appeals court to hear a case against the new federal health care law’s mandate for free birth control and other reproductive health services, went searching on Friday for some way to make sure that the government does not delay in issuing a final order on who has to obey that mandate. At a hearing that lasted more than twice the scheduled time, an apparent majority of the three-judge panel left the impression that they would not push for an early court ruling on the constitutionality of that requirement, even while showing some sympathy for the plight of religious colleges that complain it will interfere with their faith beliefs.

Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Paul Coleman has authored an important new book, released this week, about the criminalization of so-called “hate speech” in Europe and the widespread threat it poses to free speech everywhere.

Christian Institute: The court, the highest in the country, ruled unanimously in X v Mid Sussex Citizens Advice Bureau that volunteers are not covered by the same discrimination rights as employees. The Christian Institute intervened in the case to protect the religious freedom of churches and other religious bodies. | X v Mid Sussex Citizens Advice Bureau, [2012] UKSC 59

Barbara Kay at the National Post: In 2008, however, Quebec introduced a province-wide program called Ethics and Religious Culture (ERC) running throughout elementary school, and all but one high school year. Every Quebec student — even the homeschooled — is obligated to take this state-composed program. And teachers, whatever their beliefs or religious affiliation, must teach it.

Ryan T. Anderson at Ricochet: Redefining marriage would abandon the norm of male-female sexual complementarity as an essential characteristic of marriage. Making that optional would also make other essential characteristics—like monogamy, exclusivity and permanency—optional, as my co-authors and I argue in our new book, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense.

Family Research Council: For our troops in the Middle East, it’s not away in a manger — it’s away goes the manger! After years of celebrating Christmas with a live nativity, the U.S. Navy is ordering military families to tear down its display on a Bahrain base. Service members were stunned. The news was most upsetting for the kids, who look forward to playing their parts all year long. “It was devastating,” one officer told Fox News. “Here we are serving in the Middle East, defending our country and other people’s religions… and we can’t even enjoy our own.”

Religion Clause Blog: In Ockletree v. Franciscan Health System, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 175515 (WD WA, Dec. 11, 2012), a Washington federal district court certified to the Washington Supreme Court the question of whether the broad blanket exemption in the Washington Law Against Discrimination for non-profit religious organizations is constitutional under the Washington state constitution.

Washington Post: The White House and the nation’s most prominent charities are embroiled in a tense, behind-the-scenes debate over President Obama’s push to scale back the nearly century-old tax deduction on donations that the charities say is crucial for their financial health.

Jordan Lorence at USA Today: The Supreme Court will soon consider why government is in the marriage business. A federal court in a Hawaii lawsuit recently answered that question well: Government can “rationally conclude that, other things being equal, it is best for children to be raised by a parent of each sex.”

LifeSiteNews: It is “inevitable that gay couples will seek the right to marry in Church and that Churches will refuse to permit them to do so,” said UKIP. Despite the government’s assurances, “there will, very soon after the introduction of gay civil marriage, be a challenge in first the domestic courts of England and Wales and then in the European Court of Human Rights alleging that the exclusion of gay people from the right to have a religious ceremony of marriage is unlawful discrimination against them on the grounds of their sexual orientation.”

On Brief, Iowa’s Appellate Blog: This afternoon, the Iowa Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Gartner v. Iowa Department of Public Health, which presents the following issue: When a mother gives birth to a child, does the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision in Varnum v. Brien require that the mother’s same-sex spouse be listed on the birth certificate?

Reuters: Britain outlined plans on Tuesday to allow gay marriage that have split Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservatives and raised fears among religious groups they will be forced to hold same-sex weddings.

Ryan T. Anderson and Andrew T. Walker at National Review: Regardless of what Will might imagine, support for marriage isn’t a relic of the past. A careful look at the polls reveals complex and dynamic trends. But how those polls change over time will depend on human choice, not blind historical forces. The right question is not what will happen, but what we should do. Would George Will give up market economies if polls showed an “emerging consensus” in favor of socialism? We think not.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed suit against the New York Department of Motor Vehicles in 2004 for rejecting a pro-adoption group’s application to sponsor a “Choose Life” specialty plate as part of a state program.

Eastern Michigan University has agreed to settle an Alliance Defending Freedom lawsuit filed on behalf of Julea Ward, a graduate student whom the university expelled from a counseling program for abiding by her religious beliefs. As a result, a federal district court issued an agreed-upon order of dismissal Monday.

LifeNews: A federal judge ruled that the Choose Life plates in North Carolina are constitutional unsound because the state legislature did not offer a pro-abortion version of the plates for motorists to purchase.

In May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit said that, because the town contains predominantly Christian clergy, it should invite non-Christians from other jurisdictions to invite to pray at its own town meetings and take other uncommon steps to ensure that non-Christians do not “feel like outsiders.”

Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Legal Counsel Roger Kiska will join two other expert witnesses to testify before the U.S. Helsinki Commission Monday on the state-sanctioned marginalization of Christians in Western Europe.

The U.S. Supreme Court Friday agreed to review the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s marriage amendment.

“Marriage between a man and a woman is a universal good that diverse cultures and faiths have honored throughout the history of Western Civilization. Marriage expresses the truth that men and women bring distinct, irreplaceable gifts to family life. The ProtectMarriage.com legal team looks forward to advocating before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the people’s right to preserve this fundamental building block of civilization.”

SCOTUS Blog has just broken the news. This posted may be updated as more information comes.

Detroit Free Press: One bill would allow physicians and other health care providers to refuse to provide services to patients when there’s a “moral” or “conscientious” objection, and allow employers to refuse to pay for services on the same grounds; another three-bill package would require women seeking insurance through Michigan’s soon-to-exist health care exchange — part of federal health care reform — to purchase an optional abortion insurance rider to have such services covered.

Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy: In NFIB v. Sebelius the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate penalty as a constitutional exercise of the federal taxing power. Although little of the briefing (and even less of the oral argument) considered the question, the Court concluded the penalty did not constitute a “direct tax.” This conclusion was necessary to sustain the penalty as a tax because direct taxes must be apportioned among the states by population. But if the penalty is not a direct tax, that does not mean it is free from constitutional defect. As David Rivkin and Lee Casey write in today’s WSJ, the Uniformity Clause of Article I, Section 8 could provide the basis for another attack on the penalty. They write:

SCOTUS Blog: At tomorrow’s Conference, the Court will consider ten petitions presenting issues relating to same-sex marriage.  During the last two weeks, the blog ran Lyle’s four-part series explaining the issues in each of the cases before the Court, and Amy analyzed the cases and issues in “Plain English”; links to those posts are below.

Religion Clause Blog (links to the report and more): The Commission on Accountability and Policy for Religious Organizations this week issued its first report to Sen. Charles Grassley.

People are once again free to peacefully share their faith at the “Bentleyville Tour of Lights” event in Duluth. A federal court ruled Wednesday that the city violated a court order when it reinstated a First Amendment ban at the event.

Salon: In a unanimous ruling Wednesday, the Supreme Court of Mexico has paved the way for same-sex couples to marry in every one of the country’s 31 states before the U.S. has federal marriage equality.

Fox News: South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint is leaving Congress to head the conservative Heritage Foundation. The Tea Party-backed senator announced the move Thursday, saying he will step down from the Senate in January to become president of The Heritage Foundation think tank.

An Alliance Defending Freedom attorney will be available for media interviews following oral arguments by co-counsel Thursday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in a lawsuit involving a Montgomery County, Md. law that forces pro-life pregnancy counselors to advise women against using their services.

Amanda Marcotte at Slate: Given the choice between two stereotypes—the passive princess whose charm and beauty brings a man to one knee or an insecure needball who nagged a reluctant man into marriage—women will pick the former every time. In order to change that, we’d have to dramatically restructure our cultural understanding of gender and romance, away from stereotypes of promiscuous men who love only reluctantly and overeager women who just want to put a ring on it.

AP: Asked by Coombs why Manning’s gender-identification issues increased his risk of self-injury, Blenis replied, “That’s not normal, sir.” “When you add that on top of a few other things we’ve talked about, it just shows he’s not stable,” Blenis said. “It’s a cause for concern.”

Boston Globe (AP): The Senate passed its version of the defense bill on Tuesday and now must reconcile it with the House measure, which does not include the abortion provision. Three of the four top negotiators – Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash. – favor lifting the ban.

Washington Times: A federal appeals court on Wednesday questioned not only President Obama’s controversial January recess appointments but the entire system of such appointments, using oral arguments in a case to cast doubt on whether presidential powers can ever be exercised unless Congress has adjourned for good.

Helen Alvare at Public Discourse: Contraception isn’t the only way to plan a family, and it certainly isn’t cost-free: contraception leads to sexual disillusionment and weakens the marriage culture at the expense of the least well-off women. The second in a three-part series.

SCOTUS Blog has posted their most recent installment which still includes the marriage cases.

Tulsa World: The measure would have required any woman seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound within an hour of the procedure and to have its results explained to her before the procedure. | OKLAHOMA COALITION FOR REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE v. CLINE, 2012 OK 102 (No. 110765) (Dec. 4, 2012)

Sacramento Bee: On Tuesday morning, U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller ruled that the law prohibiting licensed mental health providers from steering patients under 18 away from gay and lesbian lifestyles does not infringe on the suing providers’ constitutional guarantee …

AP: A federal judge on Monday temporarily blocked California from enforcing a first-of-its-kind law that bars licensed psychotherapists from working to change the sexual orientations of gay minors, but he limited the scope of his order to just the three providers who have appealed to him to overturn the measure. | Order: Welch v. Brown | Pacific Justice Institute press release: Federal Judge Rules that CA SB1172 Violates Free Speech

MSNBC: The American Psychiatric Association has revised its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and it no longer lists being transgender as a mental disorder, among other changes announced this past weekend.

LifeNews: The treaty needed a two-thirds vote for approval and the Senate voted 61-38 to approve, which fell short of that requirement. Democrats voted for the treaty while most Republicans voted against it.

This post may be updated. Arkansas Game & Fish Commission v. U.S. SCOTUS Blog reports on 8-0 opinion by Justice Ginsburg: The Court holds that flooding that is induced by the government and temporary in duration is not exempt from …

Paul. A. Rahe at Ricochet: The heart of the matter is this. As a people — thanks in part to our astonishing prosperity, thanks in part to technological change, and thanks in part to the ordinary human propensity for self-indulgence — we have abandoned the notion that impulse-control is a thing both good and necessary, and we have abandoned it in a sphere that is fundamental. We are creatures of habit. In the absence of sexual self-control, there is apt to be very little self-control of any kind.

William C. Duncan at National Review: In the wake of the Ninth Circuit’s decision striking down Proposition 8, Lambda Legal sued the State of Nevada alleging the state’s marriage amendment was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yesterday, the trial court issued a decision rejecting the claim and upholding Nevada’s law . . . The court’s holding on the question of whether same-sex marriage advocates are politically powerless is particularly interesting . . .

Just 25 miles from a North Carolina college that censored the phrase “Christmas trees” before reversing course last week, an elementary school has removed a sentence referring to “God” from a 1st-grader’s poem commemorating her grandfathers’ military service.

Alliance Defending Freedom and Jubilee Campaign, together with several other concerned organizations, are formally requesting that the U.S. State Department designate the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram as a “foreign terrorist organization.

Religion Clause Blog: In Center for Inquiry v. Marion Circuit Court, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 170243 (SD IN, Nov. 30, 2012), an Indiana federal district court rejected constitutional challenges to Indiana’s marriage solemnization statute (IN Code 31-11-6-1).  Under the statute, clergy can obtain a license to solemnize marriages, but those certified as “Secular Celebrants” by the non-religious Center for Inquiry cannot.

Derek Bekebred at Public Discourse: Students across the country have been pushing back against liberal dominance, but we cannot solve the problem on our own. We need the full support of our party and conservative allies . . . Instead of abandoning fundamental portions of the Republican platform, it’s time for the party to embrace a new one: outreach to America’s universities on social issues.

Lyle Denniston at SCOTUS Blog: This the fourth and final article in the series explaining the constitutional controversy, now awaiting the Supreme Court’s attention, over same-sex marriage.  The Court is scheduled to take its first look at that issue at its private Conference this morning.  This article discusses the various options open to the Court for dealing with those cases.  As soon as the Court announces any actions on these cases, the blog will report that.  The three prior articles in this series can be foundhere, here, and here.

SCOTUS Blog reports.

SCOTUS Blog provides this list that includes the marriage cases.

The Hill: he Stop Harming Our Kids Resolution, H.Con.Res. 141, is a sense of Congress resolution that finds efforts to change the sexual orientation of minors are harmful, and should be prohibited.

Lee Habeeb & Mike Leven at National Review: Conservatives need to support their arguments with creative storytelling.”>National Review: But if there is one thing conservatives can agree on post-election, it’s this: The dominance of the Left in the storytelling arena is making a difference at the polls. It’s impossible to measure, but anyone who doesn’t think it skews outcomes is living in an alternative universe.

San Francisco Chronicle (AP): The Alliance Defending Freedom argues that state government is allowed to pay for abortions for indigent women only for “therapeutic reasons,” including when the life or health of the woman is in danger or in cases of rape or incest, under state laws and a 1995 Minnesota Supreme Court decision . . . Steven Aden, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom, said the numbers cited in the lawsuit represent the “best assessment” the group could make based on the statistics available. He said a fuller picture of the “illegitimate public funding of elective abortions” will emerge as the case proceeds.

SCOTUS Blog: This is the third of four articles explaining the constitutional controversy, now awaiting the Supreme Court’s attention, over same-sex marriage.  The Court is scheduled to consider ten petitions on that issue at its private Conference tomorrow.  This articles discusses the legal arguments against same-sex marriage.  The final article tomorrow will discuss the options the Court has in considering the cases.  The first article in this series can be found here, and the second article is here.

Naple News: In a case that offers a glimpse of the complexity of Florida’s parental-notification of abortion law, a divided appeals court this week overruled a Polk County judge and said a 17-year-old girl could receive an abortion without her mother being told. | In re Petition of Jane Doe

Kevin Kukla at LifeSiteNews: The Center for Reproductive Rights is attacking Costa Rica’s IVF laws as a means to push for greater access to abortion and contraception. CRR believes that legalizing IVF in Costa Rica will have, what they consider, positive repercussions for other “reproductive health” issues in the pro-life nations of Latin America. They call laws against IVF a “personhood movement in disguise, similar to efforts in the U.S. to define a fertilized egg as a person.”

Robert Knight at Townhall: Pawing through the ashes of the Romney defeat, it’s clear that if the Republican Party wants to compete nationally, it has to do several things, such as re-message timeless traditional values, attract more young and minority voters, particularly Hispanics, and do a better job of getting out the vote. But this will be moot if the integrity of the voting process is not restored.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys and allied attorneys filed suit Tuesday on behalf of two African-American taxpayers in Minnesota who are challenging the unauthorized use of state funding for elective abortions.

SCOTUS Blog: This is the second of four articles explaining the constitutional controversy, now awaiting the Supreme Court’s attention, over same-sex marriage. The Court is scheduled to consider ten petitions on that issue at its private Conference on Friday. This article discusses the legal arguments in favor of same-sex marriage. Later articles will discuss the arguments against, and the options the Court has in considering the cases. The first article in this series can be found here.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: The case had acquired worldwide notoriety when the Court of Justice of the European Union, answering a prejudicial question that had been submitted to it by the BGH, found that the existence of a human embryo begins at the moment of conception, and that therefore inventions that involved the use of embryonic stem cells were therefore excluded from patent protection under the EU Biopatent Directive.

College changes ‘Christmas tree sale’ to ‘holiday tree sale’
in student club’s ads for charitable fundraiser

Courthouse News Service: A Michigan church that subpoenaed several anonymous email accounts after LGBT-rights activists interrupted its services should not face a sanction, the 9th Circuit ruled Monday.

Reuters: The American Civil Liberties Union sued on Tuesday on behalf of four U.S. servicewomen to challenge a longstanding policy barring women from thousands of ground combat positions, citing the changing nature of warfare and fairness for career soldiers. The civil rights group argued in a legal complaint filed in federal court in Northern California that a military policy to bar women from combat roles on the basis of gender was unconstitutional. | ACLU press release and complaint

Marines Corps Times: Female Marines soon will be required to perform pull-ups, just like male Marines do, as part of their annual physical fitness tests, the Marine Corps’ top general announced Tuesday. The change takes effect Jan. 1, 2014 . . .

Michael O’Hanlon at the Wall Street Journal: As for the two women who started in September, one passed the initial “combat endurance test” and the other failed (as did 26 of the 107 male recruits). The test is akin to an Ironman competition combined with examinations of core infantry fighting skills. The woman who failed was (and remains) a remarkable Marine officer. She was extremely fit and had no trouble with the endurance aspects of the test. Her poise under stress and uncertainty was also impressive. But her upper-body strength wasn’t adequate for the several parts of the test requiring intensive use of the arms, back and shoulders.

Bangor Daily News: A Superior Court judge on Tuesday r uled in favor of the Orono schools and against the parents of a transgender child who in 2007 was forced to stop using the girls bathroom and told to use a staff bathroom after the grandfather of a male student complained.

LifeNews: New York Times magazine noticed the fertility gap with an article that shows women with families and women with larger families are more likely to vote Republican.

SCOTUS Blog: This is the first article in a four-part series explaining the constitutional controversy, now awaiting the Supreme Court’s attention, over same-sex marriage. At its private Conference on Friday, the Court is scheduled to consider ten separate petitions seeking review of lower court decisions on that issue. Eight of the petitions deal with the constitutionality of a 1996 federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, as it applies to gays and lesbians who are already legally married under state law. One petition deals with a similar state law adopted in 2009 in Arizona for state employees. And the tenth involves the constitutionality of California’s “Proposition 8,” a voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage in that state. Today’s first article in the series deals with the choice of a constitutional “standard of review” — that is, the test to be used to judge the validity of any of these laws. Later articles in the series will deal with the legal arguments for and against same-sex marriage, and with the options the Justices have as they consider the ten petitions.

Alliance Defending Freedom sent a letter Monday to Little Rock School District and one of its schools to encourage them to ignore an atheist group’s complaints about allowing students to view a play based on the classic Charles Schulz television special “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Legal Counsel Erik Stanley will be available for media interviews following his oral argument Tuesday at the Arizona Court of Appeals in defense of a church facing an illegally assessed property tax bill that would force it to shut down.

Luis Tellez at Public Discourse: Many friends have said that same-sex marriage is inevitable. It is not. I have confidence that fence-sitters will enter the fray in support of traditional marriage. As we continue to debate this issue, three important forces can shift the outcome in favor of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Consider first, public opinion; second, the methods and the message of LGBT activists; and third, reality.