Tag Archives: Category: Religious Freedom

News from The Associated Press: The Virginia state Senate passed legislation Thursday allowing private adoption agencies to deny placements that conflict with their religious or moral beliefs, including opposition to homosexuality.

Turtle Bay and Beyond: The White House blog in a post called “Health Reform, Preventive Services, and Religious Institutions” addresses women’s preventive services required under the Affordable Care Act by religious institutions.

Houston Chronicle: Settling a controversial prayer lawsuit, the Medina Valley Independent School District has agreed that its teachers, administrators and other employees will not pray with students, elicit prayer, proselytize, or display religious artifacts.

Fox News: A Rhode Island town is bracing for a potentially “boisterous” public hearing next week where officials will vote on whether to fight a court order to take down a prayer banner that has hung for decades in a high school.

Sacramento Bee: U.S. District Judge Fred Biery on Thursday admonished those who “demagogued this case for their own political goals.” He then added, “You should be ashamed of yourselves.”

LifeSiteNews.com: Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), told LifeSiteNews.com “we will not comply” with the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring religious institutions to cover abortifacient products such as Plan B, Ella, and the IUD.

CBS New York (includes video): “The federal government should do what it’s traditionally done since July 4, 1776, namely back out of intruding into the internal life of a church,” Dolan told CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.

The Hill: The White House struggled Wednesday to contain the growing uproar over its birth-control mandate, with Democrats peeling off one by one in what has become an increasingly divisive election-year controversy.

OneNewsNow.com: Liberty Counsel is proud of an Alabama school board for standing strong against a complaint filed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation concerning religious assemblies.

LifeNews.com: “I’m not a Catholic but I stand in 100% solidarity with my brothers & sisters to practice their belief against govt pressure,” Warren said. “I’d go to jail rather than cave in to a govement mandate that violates what God commands us to do. Would you? Acts 5:29.”

ADF Attorney Jeremy Tedesco at the Online Library of Law and Liberty: In the end, the court struck at the very heart of what Julea’s lawsuit is all about: that the First Amendment prohibits public universities from demanding that students change or violate their beliefs as a condition to getting a degree. As the court said: “A university cannot compel a student to alter or violate her belief systems . . . as the price for obtaining a degree.” The Sixth Circuit is right, “Tolerance is a two-way street.” A fact that is often lost on public universities when it comes to Christian expression and belief, as Julea’s case so clearly shows.

LifeNews.com: In a new interview with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News, “pro-life” former Democratic congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan says he is opposed to the controversial new Obama mandate that forces religious employers to pay for birth control and abortion-causing drugs in employee health insurance plans.

NewsOK.com: Religious groups that oppose President Obama’s mandate that they provide contraception are using the right to religious liberty as a way to discriminate against women, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in an email opposing congressional repeal of the mandate.

ADF Attorney Jeremy Tedesco appeared on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss the situation. | MP3 audio 14:07 mins

The Alabama Baptist: The Vanderbilt is just one of dozens of cases playing out on campuses all across the country, said David Cortman, senior counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund. “The university is supposed to be the marketplace of ideas, but it ends up being the storefront of censorship,” he said, noting the CLS v. Martinez decision does not apply to private schools.

Bloomberg: This is a blatant matter of abusing the rights of church officials to be involved in local affairs,” said Joel Oster, a lawyer in Kansas for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based group that represents religious organizations. “We are excited about this case because of the precedent that could be established.”

News from The Associated Press: A nonprofit legal firm, Liberty Institute in Washington, D.C., planned to file its petition Thursday . . .

Daniel Henninger at WSJ.com: Pope John Paul II, surveying from his seat in the eternal hereafter the battle between the American Catholic Church and the Obama administration over mandated contraception services, must be permitting himself a sad smile. The pope knew more than most about the innate tensions between the state and its citizens. The Obamaites will object that it is unfair to liken their government to the Communist Party of Poland. That is not the point. What the former Karol Wojtyla knew is that any state will claim benevolence on behalf of doing whatever it thinks it needs to do in pursuit of its goals.

David Cortman at the Washington Examiner: The intolerant and discriminatory exclusion of people of faith from university programs and professions has no place in a society dedicated to religious freedom and tolerance for all. Public universities, hospitals, and professional licensing boards should not force people to violate their sincere religious beliefs as the price to enter or stay in a profession. In the words of the court, “tolerance is a two-way street.”

GoBlueRidge.net: The Town of Newland is being threatened by a national group over the posting of the Ten Commandments at the town hall.

Baptist Press: With a weekend deadline approaching when churches will no longer be allowed to meet in public schools, the New York State Senate overwhelmingly approved a bill that would allow worship services to continue.

Catholic Culture: A state law in Hawaii may form the basis for a compromise between the Obama administration and the US Catholic bishops on the mandate to include contraceptive coverage in health-care plans.

WorldNetDaily (includes video): But this time a Christian professor is pointing out that under the same rule, Christians would be allowed to join an organization of atheists or Muslims and exert influence.

Daily Caller carries the video.

Sen. Rand Paul at National Review Online: In his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, Pope John Paul II delivered a scathing critique of socialism, declaring that “the fundamental error of socialism is anthropological in nature. Socialism considers the individual person simply as an element, a molecule within the social organism, so that the good of the individual is completely subordinated. . . .

Nikolas T. Nikas and Dorinada Bordlee at National Review Online: While a much longer treatment is called for, here’s three quick facts that everyone should know . . .

LifeNews.com: Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning is coordinating a legal challenge against the controversial Obama mandate requiring religious employers to cover birth control and drugs that can cause abortions.

CBS Detroit: In a case that could set national precedent, the three-judge Michigan Court of Appeals panel plans to hear arguments Thursday about whether a pastor’s testimony related to a possible confession in a child sexual assault case may be used in court.

Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops of North and Central America – Record of Protest Against the Infringement of Religious Liberty by HHS: . . . We, the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops, call upon HHS Secretary Sebelius and the Obama Administration to rescind this unjust ruling and to respect the religious freedom guaranteed all Americans by the First Amendment.

Religion Clause: Today’s New York Daily News reports that two parents are suing school officials over decisions by two principals to send unvaccinated children home when other students at their schools contracted communicable diseases.

Catholic Culture: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has released a statement that offers “clarifications regarding the Health and Human Services regulations on mandatory coverage of contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.”

POLITICO.com: The advice coming from Biden and Daley also represented a division among the president’s top advisers, with a group of top women all urging the president to not create an exemption for religious organizations.

News from The Associated Press: Romney has accused Obama of an “assault on religion” over the issue. But Carney says a virtually identical policy is in place in Massachusetts, where Romney served as governor, and that it’s ironic for Romney to criticize Obama over it.

GoDanRiver.com: A federal judge has given the Pittsylvania County woman behind the ACLU’s lawsuit against the board of supervisors 30 days to reveal her name.

Havelock News: “It’s amazing to me that by virtue of being elected to this office, my speech is being restricted,” Commissioner Jeff Taylor said.

Hot Air:The ACLU protests this perception, pointing to a number of controversial clients they have defended and insist that their mission is only to preserve the civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights and the rest of the US Constitution. I think this puts the ACLU argument to rest once and for all . . .

Altavista Journal: A federal judge on Friday issued a preliminary injunction barring the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors from opening meetings with Christian prayers pending the outcome of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

WSJ.com: The political furor over President Obama’s birth-control mandate continues to grow, even among those for whom contraception poses no moral qualms, and one needn’t be a theologian to understand why. The country is being exposed to the raw political control that is the core of the Obama health-care plan, and Americans are seeing clearly for the first time how this will violate pluralism and liberty.

OneNewsNow.com: But Alliance Defense Fund attorney Bryon Babione maintains that she was fired because she took a stand for her faith. “The right to refer is a pervasive right in counseling, and she followed that, but she was nevertheless laid off for doing that,” he says. “They said it was inappropriate that she told the client that she had personal beliefs which would not allow her to effectively counsel that particular client.”

LifeNews: Boehner Pledges Congress Will Overturn New Obama Mandate (includes video)

In today’s broadcast, Rush Limbaugh read from this report –  LifeSiteNews, December 9, 2005 by Gudrun Schultz: In a shocking turn-around, Massachusetts’s governor Mitt Romney announced yesterday that Roman Catholic and other private hospitals in the state will be forced to offer emergency contraception to sexual assault victims under new state legislation, regardless of the hospitals’ moral position on the issue . . .

ABA Journal: Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Byron Babione, who represented Walden, said he was disappointed in the ruling. “It is unlawful to punish a Christian for abiding by her faith, particularly when she made every effort to accommodate the interests of a potential client,” he said in a statement. “We are determining next steps to ultimately vindicate Marcia and the freedoms for which she’s fighting.”

ADF Attorney Jeff Shafer at Townhall: Granting leadership positions to those who disagree with an organization’s outlook is a most effective means to undermine it. That’s precisely why the university would never submit itself to the policy it is imposing on its religious student community—revealing that the university is fully aware of the destructive effect of that policy. The student body at Vanderbilt deserves better treatment than that.

Rasmussen Reports.

God and Country : US Representative Randy Forbes (R-Va) has written a letter (PDF) signed by 35 members of the House asking the Air Force restore a unit’s motto that was changed after an atheist’s complaint. The incident to which Rep Forbes is referring was actually first reported on ChristianFighterPilot.com, with the Religion Clause and the ADF Alliance Alert subsequently citing this site.

CNN.com Blogs: But O’Malley, who identified himself as a Catholic, noted Sunday that 28 states already enforce such a policy.

ADF President and General Counsel at National Review Online: If the federal government can succeed in forcing people to violate their faith, it will have the power to force anyone to do anything. It is therefore sad but not surprising that Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius took to USA Today this week to spin rather than explain her boss’s decision to force people and entities all over the country to fund abortifacients, contraception, and sterilization against their consciences.

LifeSiteNews.com: Even as the United States’ Catholic bishops have launched an all-out campaign against the Obama administration’s birth control mandate and urged their flocks to resistance, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has invoked the support of “fellow Catholics” to justify her position in favor of the mandate.

The Salt Lake Tribune.

Mr. Obama could amend that order or issue a new one to order federal contractors not to discriminate in their workplaces on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Religion Clause: Yet another decision has been handed down in the 7-year litigation over Plano, Texas Independent School District rules that, among other things, prevented a student from handing out candy canes with attached religious messages. In Morgan v. Plano Independent School District, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 12875 (ED TX, Feb. 1, 2012), a Texas federal magistrate judge summarized the prior history of the case . . .

Religion Clause: As previously reported, the Nevada Republican Party yesterday scheduled an evening caucus to accommodate Orthodox Jews who could not attend Saturday daytime caucuses for religious reasons.

Religion Clause: It appears that the letter posed particular issues for Catholic chaplains in the U.S. military who received a letter to read from Archbishop Timothy Broglio, head of the Archdiocese for the Military Services USA. God and Country blog reports that Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains e-mailed senior chaplains advising them that Broglio had not coordinated the letter with the Chief of Chaplains Office.

News from The Associated Press: A political adviser to President Barack Obama said Tuesday the administration didn’t intend to “abridge anyone’s religious freedom” with its regulation requiring church-affiliated employers to cover birth control for their workers.

News from The Associated Press: South Carolina drivers can buy religious license plates that feature three crosses and a sunrise.

Heritage Foundation Foundry Blog: Luckily for Ms. Rowe, the Alliance Defense Fund took up her cause and provided legal representation. Ms. Rowe invoked her freedom of association under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as a defense against the claim that her statement preferring “a female Christian roommate” illegally discriminated. Ultimately, HUD ruled sensibly . . .

ADF President and General Counsel Alan E. Sears on the Hugh Hewitt Show. | MP3 audio 10:24 mins

How Appealing links to more coverage of the ruling. __________________ The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Byron Babione regarding the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit today in Walden v. Centers …

ADF Attorney Matt Bowman appeared on The Victoria Taft Show to discuss the situation. | MP3 audio 6:41 mins

ADF Attorney Jeremy Tedesco appeared on FRC’s Washington Watch to discuss the ruling. | MP3 audio 9:03 mins

ADF Attorney Jeremy Tedesco appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show to discuss the ruling. | MP3 audio 5:35 mins

ADF President and General Counsel Alan E. Sears appeared on Truth that Transforms. | MP3 audio 24:23 mins

OneNewsNow.com: We talked with the school district, and they realized that their policies were unconstitutional [and] needed to change, and so they have fortunately drafted new policies that make sure that all religious speech is treated equally and that our client, in this case A.W., has the right to invite her friends [at school] to church activities …,” details Matt Sharp, ADF litigation staff counsel.

WORLD New York: Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defense Fund told the Council that no other city has had a ban and so far, none has been sued for violating the First Amendment. Up until now, the primary rhetoric in favor of the ban centered on protecting the minds of impressionable youth. But today’s hearing revealed deeper concerns and a fundamental anti-Christian bias.

JournalNow.com: Although the Alliance Defense Fund is also offering to defend its revised policy if challenged in court, there were no takers on the county board on Thursday. Commissioner Gloria Whisenhunt said she was against telling anyone how to pray: “I could never invite anyone here to pray, and meet them at the door and tell them how to pray,” she said. “That is insulting.” | Also reported at: MyFox8.com

Todaysthv.com: “All students should have the freedom to express their beliefs. The Constitution clearly prohibits bans that single out a religious viewpoint,” said ADF Litigation Staff Counsel Matt Sharp. “This settlement means that fliers for ‘church-related’ activities will be treated with the same respect given to fliers for numerous other community programs and events.”

OneNewsNow.com (2/2): “I would … urge people to realize that Mayor Bloomberg needs to know that the whole nation is watching him and that he’s not doing this in isolation or in private,” Lorence notes. “And so I would urge people to write letters or e-mails to Michael Bloomberg, City Hall, New York, New York — that’s all the address you would need.” [more]

ADF Attorney Jeremy Tedesco at the Detroit Free Press (2/2): These five simple, yet profound, words come from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit’s recent opinion in a case involving Eastern Michigan University’s expulsion of Julea Ward from its graduate counseling program.

The Eastern Echo: Tedesco said the court recognized Ward’s rights were violated by the EMU. “The court said that the university can’t force a student to alter or violate her beliefs as a condition to getting a degree. That’s what we’ve been saying the university was up to from the beginning,” Tedesco said. “The Sixth Circuit really hit that and said, ‘That’s unacceptable. The First Amendment doesn’t allow it.’

CBS New York: Catholic leaders upped the ante Monday, threatening to challenge the Obama administration over a provision of the new health care law that would require all employers, including religious institutions, to pay for birth control.

CNSnews.com: Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who leads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services, wrote a letter to be read at all Sunday Masses for U.S. military personnel around the world that said that a regulation issued by the Obama Administration under the new federal health care law was “a blow” to a freedom that U.S. troops have not only fought to defend but for which some have recently died in battle.

ADF submitted legal opinion letter to Forest Service, will offer to defend memorial if attacked in court

In the wake of a federal court order that halted a Pulaski County Special School District flier policy, district officials have settled a lawsuit with Alliance Defense Fund attorneys representing a 3rd-grade student and her mother who had been denied permission to distribute fliers for church-sponsored activities.

Baptist Press: When I was in New York City last weekend, I learned about a huge inconsistent way that the city’s public schools treat churches: Churches may not meet in public schools, but public schools can meet in churches.

ABC News (includes video): or the first time ever, gay-rights advocates will launch a sassy advertising campaign aimed at football fans in the most macho of American venues — the Super Bowl.