Category Archives: Religious Liberty

WKBN (AP): Some parents and a civil rights group oppose policies to insert creationism and other religious issues into a western Ohio school district’s classrooms. | ACLU press release and letter

Via Walter Russell Mead, I learn that the New York City Council passed a resolution on Marc DeGirolami at Mirror of Justice: Wednesday calling for the granting of equal access to churches and houses of worship to public school property (it calls for new legislation to amend the New York State Education Law in this respect). Over at CLR Forum, I have on various occasions discussed the “serpentine path” of litigation in the Bronx Household of Faith case . . .

Freedom from Religion Foundation: The Freedom From Religion Foundation has renewed its objections to constitutional violations occurring aboard U.S. Navy ships. In a May 20 letter to Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, FFRF Staff Attorney Andrew Seidel urged Mabus to order an end to the practice of broadcasting official nightly prayers over ships’ loudspeakers.

Today, the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) filed an unopposed motion for a preliminary injunction in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, requesting that the court enjoin the Obama administration from enforcing the HHS “contraception” mandate against Johnson Welded Products, Inc.

USA Today: “The Boy Scouts of America has been built upon the values of faith and family for more than 100 years and (Thursday’s) decision contradicts generations of tradition in the name of political correctness,” Perry said in a statement. “While I will always cherish my time as a scout and the life lessons I learned, I am greatly disappointed with this decision.”

Becket Fund: We are encouraged by today’s hearing before the full 10th Circuit Court of Appeals,” said Kyle Duncan, General Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and counsel on the case. “Being heard before all eight judges – rather than the typical three-judge panel – signifies the importance of the case and the arguments being made. We stand firm in our belief that Hobby Lobby should have the right to opt out of a provision that infringes on their religious beliefs, and we look forward to a favorable outcome.”

Buzz Feed: Advocates — and the bill’s lead sponsor — had hoped the chairman would consider the bill, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, in his committee in May or June. It won’t happen until “probably after the Fourth of July break,” Iowa’s Tom Harkin says.

Denver Post: Federal judges peppered lawyers for the federal government and Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. with questions Thursday as the two squared off over the corporation’s challenge to a part of the federal health care law that requires it to offer employees health coverage that includes access to the morning-after pill.

Religion Clause Blog: On Wednesday the Thomas More Law Center announced that it has filed a federal civil rights action on behalf of a Houston, Texas Christian street preacher who was arrested three different by Houston police. According to the press release . . .

Forum 18: Hundreds of religious communities across Russia are among non-governmental organisations (NGOs) inspected by officials, Forum 18 News Service has found. Check-ups ranged from a simple telephone request for documents to multiple, extensive searches. It “wasn’t simply the initiative of the Prosecutor”, Moscow-based lawyer Konstantin Andreyev told Forum 18. “There’s a political subtext.”

AP: Without naming Lerner, new Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel emailed employees that 27-year IRS veteran Ken Corbin would become acting head of the exempt organizations division

Thomas Berg at Mirror of Justice: Two key claims of Micah’s article were that (1) you can’t support distinctive accommodations for religious freedom unless you also support meaningful distinctive limits on religion serving as the rationale/purpose for laws and (2) ultimately there is no good reason for treating religion differently from deeply held, comprehensive nonreligious moral beliefs.

Ed Whelan at National Review: There are two good reasons why the DOJ attorney’s argument that vindicating the RFRA rights of the business owners would violate the Establishment Clause was an “unexpected twist.” First, DOJ never made that argument in either of its Seventh Circuit briefs in the two cases. Second, there is good reason that it didn’t, for the argument is inane.

Fox News: The IRS official who oversaw the unit responsible for the targeting of conservative groups has been placed on administrative leave, Fox News confirms, a day after she refused to testify at a congressional hearing.

Rick Garnett at Mirror of Justice: First, I think it would be a good thing if the possibility Eugene raises – i.e., that the Court might re-examine the so-called “endorsement test” — came to pass. I think the criticisms directed at that test in Steven Smith’s 1987 article had and have force. Next, even if the justices leave the “endorsement test” in place, I hope they do not follow the Second Circuit in importing that test into the legislative-prayer context.

Ben Kesling And Louise Radnofsky at Wall Street Journal (access via Google): One of the cases before the Seventh Circuit was brought by K&L Contractors Inc. and its owners, who argued that the general contractor’s corporate mission mirrors that of its directors and majority owners. Cyril and Jane Korte, who own the company, are Roman Catholics. “A company is an extension” of its owners’ beliefs, said Edward White, K&L’s lawyer

Religion Clause Blog: In Arizona yesterday, the state Senate gave final passage, and sent to the Governor for her signature, SB 1178, which significantly expands Arizona’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Religion Clause Blog: On Monday, the Texas legislature gave final passage and sent to the governor for his signature HB 308 that attempts to protect public schools’ teaching about Christmas and Hanukkah.  The bill provides . . .

Religion Clause Blog: UPI reports that in Philadelphia, prosecutors yesterday charged Catherine and Herbert Schaible with third degree murder in the faith healing death of their 7-month old son who died of bacterial pneumonia and dehydration.

AP: In the most prominent challenge of its kind, Hobby Lobby Stores Inc. is asking a federal appeals court Thursday for an exemption from part of the federal health care law that requires it to offer employees health coverage that includes access to the morning-after pill.

Washington Times: House Speaker John A. Boehner says it “really is inconceivable” that President Obama wouldn’t have known about the unfolding IRS scandal before learning about it from reporters, as the White House has claimed.

Fox News: Under her direction, the FEC undertook the largest enforcement action in its history — suing the Christian Coalition for violating campaign laws. The Christian Coalition won, but in one deposition, FEC lawyers asked a defendant if televangelist Pat Robertson prayed for him. James Bopp, the Christian Coalition’s lawyer, said he was “shocked and appalled” by that. . . . “She was in effect being promoted for what she had done at the Federal Election Commission and now was going to be expected … to replicate that at the IRS and now we know that’s exactly what happened,” he said.

The Hill: A bipartisan group of House lawmakers unveiled a bill on Wednesday that would force the Department of Justice (DOJ) to get a federal court’s approval before seizing records from journalists.

Sacramento Bee: An atheist lawmaker’s decision to give the daily prayer at the Arizona House of Representatives triggered a do-over from a Christian lawmaker who said the previous day’s prayer didn’t pass muster.

David Fench at National Review: Sixty-nine percent of all adoption credit claims during the 2012 filing season were selected for audit.

ACLJ: White House Claims False: IRS Targeting Ongoing

The ACLJ is preparing a federal lawsuit to be filed in Washington, D.C. on behalf of a number of clients – including organizations and groups that it has represented during this IRS assault – as well as new groups that have approached the ACLJ in recent days. The ACLJ is finalizing the complaint and continues to add plaintiffs. The lawsuit is expected to be filed early next week.

Politico: House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa said embattled IRS official Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment rights and will be hauled back to appear before his panel again.

CNSNews: Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) was applauded at a congressional hearing Wednesday, after he objected to Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner pleading the Fifth Amendment and refusing to testify before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Washington Post: If we give the president the benefit of the doubt and assume he knows the truth is going to come out, the question remains: Does the administration appoint the special prosecutor sooner or later? The calculus inside the White House is how to best protect the president’s political interests. They have two options.

Freedom from Religion Foundation: Should a church in Madison, Wis., be allowed to proselytize in the Pheasant Branch Conservancy in the adjoining city of Middleton? The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a national state-church watchdog based in Madison, thinks not.

(Al Jazeera English) Murtaza Hussain at Alter Net: The US government extensively monitors its citizens’ internet activities, with dangerous effects on personal liberties.

Blog.Lawyers.com: The court could limit its ruling to legislative prayer, or it could broaden it to encompass governmental prayer in general. “It could invert the rule and the exception, and turn the general rule that government cannot endorse religion into a much narrower rule that the government cannot endorse religion in the public schools and that the government can do what it likes outside of the public schools,” says Lund.

Politico: Obamacare’s birth control mandate will go before four different appeals courts over the next three weeks as private businesses that object to the policy on religious liberty grounds bring a barrage of lawsuits that opponents hope to get before the U.S. Supreme Court as soon as this fall.

ACLU Blog: Nearly 60 lawsuits have been filed across the country challenging the federal rule that employers include contraception in the insurance they provide employees. Four courts of appeals are now poised to hear arguments in these cases, and one of these many cases is likely headed to the Supreme Court.

Religion Clause Blog: In Check v. New York City Department of Education, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71124 (ED NY, May 20, 2013), a New York federal district court adopted a magistrate’s recommendations (2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 71223, March 22, 2013) and refused to issue a preliminary injunction to require admission of plaintiff’s 5-year old daughter to school without required immunizations.

AP: Tea party activists waving flags and signs, singing patriotic songs and chanting anti-IRS slogans held rallies outside federal buildings across the country to protest the agency’s extra scrutiny of conservative groups.

AP: When a small anti-abortion group in Iowa sought nonprofit status, the Internal Revenue Service asked its board to promise not to organize protests outside Planned Parenthood and demanded to know how its prayer meetings and protest signs were educational.

AP: The Internal Revenue Service official at the center of the storm over the agency’s targeting of conservative groups has told Congress she did nothing wrong and has invoked her constitutional right to not answer lawmakers’ questions.

UT San Diego: He said he will expect those who officiate weddings at the county clerk’s office to be willing to conduct them for everybody getting married, “because we’re doing civil ceremonies; we’re not doing religious ceremonies.”

KTVZ.com: A cross in a public park in Coos Bay that has been at the center of a controversy over religious symbols in public places has been vandalize

The Star Press: Ball State University is investigating a complaint that one of its assistant professors in the department of physics and astronomy is preaching rather than teaching. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, whose mission is to act as an umbrella for those who are free from religion and are committed to the principle of separation of state and church, filed an objection to Eric Hedin’s teaching.

LA Times: Lois Lerner, the head of the exempt organizations division of the IRS, won’t answer questions about what she knew about the improper screening — or why she didn’t disclose it to Congress, according to a letter from her defense lawyer, William W. Taylor III. Lerner was scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

Jeffrey Lord at the American Spectator: March 31, 2010. According to the White House Visitors Log, provided here in searchable form by U.S. News and World Report, the president of the anti-Tea Party National Treasury Employees Union, Colleen Kelley, visited the White House at 12:30pm that Wednesday noon time of March 31st.

The Hill: Carney said that Mark Childress, the White House deputy chief of staff, twice spoke with Lois Lerner, the IRS official who oversaw the agency’s tax-exempt organization, about the strategy for revealing conservative targeting.

Religion Clause Blog: In an Alaska state trial court yesterday, acting Alaska District Court Judge Bruce G. Ward ruled in a 7-page opinion that Yupik Eskimos may not assert free exercise defenses to citations against them for illegally fishing for King Salmon.

Lyle Denniston at Constitution Daily: When the court agreed to hear the new prayer case from the city of Greece, New York, a community of about 100,000 people near Rochester, it stepped into a case in which a prayer practice at the opening of the town board meeting was struck down by a lower court using the endorsement theory. And, by granting review of that specific decision, the justices may well have been telegraphing a desire to second-guess the endorsement theory when prayers are recited at the outset of a public meeting of a government agency, with adults making up most of the audience.

Jed Glickstein, Should the Ministerial Exception Apply to Functions, Not Persons?, 122 Yale L.J. 1964 (2013)

This Note accordingly suggests an alternative framework that more closely tracks the functional considerations that underlie the ministerial exception. In short, it argues that a revised exception—one that applies to ministerial functions, not ministerial persons—better strikes the balance between antidiscrimination values and religious liberty that the First Amendment requires.

National Review: Sam Kazman and Michael Carvin have a great Forbes op-ed about their new Obamacare lawsuit, which could invalidate key portions of the law in the 33 states that did not set-up state-based health-insurance exchanges. Essentially, the lawsuit alleges that the IRS illegally rewrote the Affordable Care Act so that both the employer mandate and accompanying government subsidies applied in the 33 states that lack their own health-insurance exchanges . . . You can read the complaint here.

The Hill: The legislation is aimed at crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs), which are clinics often set up by a church or other anti-abortion groups. Democrats in Congress and other pro-abortion groups say these clinics are known to indicate they can perform abortions in order to attract pregnant women patients, and then try to convince them to carry their babies to term.

WSCOCTV.com: The American Civil Liberties Union filed suits against Rowan and Union counties for having a Christian prayer before board meetings.

Matt Barber at LifeSiteNews: Our sources have provided Liberty Counsel an internal DOJ document titled: “LGBT Inclusion at Work: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers.” It was emailed to DOJ managers in advance of the left’s so-called “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month.” The document is chilling. It’s riddled with directives that grossly violate – prima facie –employees’ First Amendment liberties.

AP: The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear a new case on the intersection of religion and government in a dispute over prayers used to open public meetings.

Religion Clause Blog: The U.S. Supreme Court today agreed to weigh in on the extensively litigated issue of opening city council meetings with prayer.

Ken Klukowski at Breitbart: Following 59 Members of Congress sending a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel regarding Pentagon officials meeting with an anti-Christian extremist, another group of 72 House Members has sent a second wide-ranging letter, exploring whether these infringements on religious liberty violate both federal law and the Constitution. (letter is embedded)

Americans United for Sep. of Church and State: Supreme Court Should Rule Against Sectarian Prayers Before Town Board Meetings, Says Americans United

U Legal Director Ayesha N. Khan, who directed the litigation for Americans United and will argue the Town of Greece v. Galloway case before the Supreme Court, said the justices should uphold the lower court’s ruling. “Legislative bodies should focus on serving the community and stay out of the business of promoting religion,” Khan said.

National Review: IRS scandal notwithstanding, on Tuesday, the (Republican-dominated) Texas legislature passed S.B. 346, a bill to force non-profit organizations and trade associations to disclose the names of the people who support them financially. The law exempts unions, but covers groups that spend more than $25,000 or more in independent expenditures about political candidates. This applies even if those expenditures are a tiny fraction of the group’s overall spending . . .

NY Times: At the first Congressional hearing into the I.R.S. scandal, J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, told members of the House Ways and Means Committee that he informed the Treasury’s general counsel of his audit on June 4, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin “shortly thereafter.”

Times-Standard: Eureka attorney Peter Martin said on Thursday that he’s hoping that a motion filed with the Humboldt County Superior Court this week will lead to a decision by early August on whether the city of Eureka violated the California Constitution by holding invocations prior to City Council meetings.

Seguin Gazette: Marion is turning the other cheek after a group asked that they halt prayers before school board meetings. The Freedom From Religion Foundation sent an email to the board on March 12 stating they had “received a complaint from a local resident.”

Knox News: Craig L. Garrett, Blount County attorney, said in a letter to commissioners that he is researching the issue and “will update the commission regarding the legal ramifications of this issue in the near future.”

Washington Blade: The Nevada Assembly on Tuesday gave final approval to a bill that would add gender identity and expression to the state’s hate crimes law.

Daily Mail: Texas Republican congressman Kevin Brady had the harshest criticism for Miller. ‘Is this still America?’ he asked him. ‘Is this government so drunk on power that it would turn its full force, its full might, to harass, and intimidate, and threaten an average American who only wants her voice, their voices heard?’

LifeNews: During intense questioning at a Congressional hearing this morning Rep. Aaron Schock asked acting commissioner Steven Miller if the IRS has asked a pro-life group about the content of its prayers.

Today, the Thomas More Society offered over 150 pages of analysis and evidence to the House Ways and Means Committee about repeated IRS harassment of pro-life organizations.

The Hill: “When you talk about targeting, that’s a pejorative term,” Miller said. Asked if the IRS’s actions had been illegal, he responded: “I don’t believe it is.” He then added of the behavior: “I don’t believe it should happen.”

CNSNews: The audience rose to its feet after Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Penn.) chided acting Commissioner Steve Miller about the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) treatment of taxpayers at a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday.

Howard Gleckman at Christian Science Monitor: The Supreme Court pushed the IRS into the morass of regulating political speech with its Citizens United decision. Congress needs to pull the IRS out of the political swamp.

AP: An internal IRS memo says Joseph Grant, commissioner of the agency’s tax exempt and government entities division, will retire June 3.

NewsMax: A pro-marriage organization claims the IRS leaked confidential financial documents to a rival group which were then used against GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney during the 2012 election.

MLIVE.com: “Detroit is where the Nation of Islam started. Detroit is almost considered now, a dead city. So we’ll come back to Detroit where we began and look at the condition of Detroit, pool our resources and try to buy properties in Detroit and start rebuilding one of the greatest cities in America where we’re concerned.”

WorldNetDaily: That was confirmed today when Dr. James Dobson, whose has served as an adviser to presidents and now runs Dr. James Dobson’s FamilyTalk, said his organization’s status was threatened because it didn’t present “all views.”

Politico: Liberty University’s challenge to the health reform law will go back before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va., on Thursday, with the school focused on getting Obamacare back before the Supreme Court. Liberty’s lawsuit is the most wide ranging of the outstanding legal challenges to the health law, hitting everything from contraceptive coverage to the employer mandate.

Kent Harper at Mesquite Local News: Search the U.S. Constitution until both eyes are sore and you’ll find no reference to “the separation of church and state.” What you will find is the beginning portion of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

NRB: In light of the Internal Revenue Service’s admission to “inappropriate” scrutiny of conservative groups, NRB President & CEO Dr. Frank Wright has encouraged House Speaker John Boehner and other Congressional leaders to stand up for churches and non-profit religious organizations.

The Raw Story: The American Humanist Association threatened to sue Missouri’s Fayette School District and several school officials on Wednesday for their alleged roles in holding morning religious ceremonies with students on school grounds every week for at least the last year.