Tag Archives: Category: Religious Freedom

Detroit Free Press | freep.com (includes video): Ward’s lawyers at the Alliance Defense Fund, a faith-based legal group, hailed the decision. “Public universities shouldn’t force students to violate their religious beliefs to get a degree,” said the Alliance’s Jeremy Tedesco. “The court rightly understood this and ruled appropriately. Rather than allow Julea to refer a potential client to another qualified counselor — a common, professional practice to best serve clients — EMU attacked and questioned Julea’s religious beliefs and ultimately expelled her from the program because of them.” | The ruling.

OneNewsNow.com: Alliance Defense Fund attorney Joel Oster was back in court this week to take on the cited law. “The appeals court in Texas heard our case about whether or not a church can speak out on local political matters. The case went really well,” he accounts. “The argument was well presented, and the court, I believe, understands that even a church has free-speech rights and has a right to petition their government for the redress of grievances.”

Religion Clause: In Islamic Center of North Fulton, Inc. v. City of Alpharetta, Georgia, (ND GA, Jan. 25, 2012), a Georgia federal district court dismissed RLUIPA and federal constitutional challenges to Alpharetta’s refusal to give zoning approval to the Islamic Center’s replacement of its present worship structure with 2 buildings– a mosque and a smaller communing hall.

Religion Clause: On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives adopted House Resolution 535 by a unanimous vote of 193-0. The Resolution (full text) provides in part . . .

Baltimore Sun: Protesters are pressuring Ocean City Mayor Rick Meehan to shun a prayer breakfast that features a former high-ranking Army officer who has made anti-Muslim remarks.

Baptist Press: To show support for a Tennessee town facing legal action against a cross atop its water tower, area residents carried a 12-foot cross nine miles to Whiteville, where it was presented to city representatives during a rally that drew about 350 people.

Fox News: Airline spokeswoman Bobbie Egan said the airline heard from customers who preferred not to mix religion with transportation. The decision reflects respect for the diverse religious beliefs and cultural attitudes of Alaska Airlines’ customers and employees . . .

Findlaw: The man accused of masterminding the Ohio Amish beard-cutting attacks made a request last week. Samuel Mullet wanted to be out on bail.

ADF Attorney Doug Napier at the Christian Post: The repeated warnings that repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” would open the door for religious discrimination were ignored, and we are already beginning to see the toxic fallout from this mistaken move. After DADT was stripped away last year, the military entered 2012 in a whole new world. It’s one in which the dismantling of DADT has actually provided homosexual activists the momentum they needed to step up and try to fashion not just the military in their own image, but other related agencies and associations as well.

Washington Blade – “America’s Leading Gay News Source”: The Anchorage Daily News reports that the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund, which has intervened in pro-LGBT ballot measures across the country for many years, has begun weighing in on the measure. “The ultimate concern with enacting something like that is that it infringes on religious freedoms,” said ADF lawyer Holly Carmichael. “There’s a huge constitutional concern here.”

East Valley Tribune: Education: Arneson contacted the Alliance Defense Fund after hearing about the organization through a friend, Scruggs said.
The Alliance Defense Fund is a “legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family,” according to ADF’s website. It is based out of Scottsdale. “These types of regulations on First Amendment rights are popping up on college campuses more and more often,” Scruggs said. “These places are devoted to the marketplace of ideas.”

Christian Newswire: On behalf of their client, Austin LifeCare, a pregnancy resource center that has been well serving pregnant women in Texas since 1984, civil rights attorneys for the Jubilee Campaign’s Law of Life Project, the Texas Center for the Defense of Life and the Alliance Defense Fund will urge the City Council of Austin at their meeting tomorrow to repeal Austin City Code 10-9, currently being challenged in Court, as recommended by their Law Department and not to enact Austin City Code 10-10 being proposed by two City councilmen that also unconstitutionally abridges Austin Life Care’s rights to freedom of speech, association and religious free exercise.

TBO.com: They all were united by a mission. And one by one, the speakers took the Hillsborough County School Board to task Tuesday over what they said was the improper teaching of Islam in a high school classroom last year by the leader of the local Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Billings Gazette: Jonathan Scruggs, an attorney for the Allied Defense Fund, who handled the WyWatch case, could not be reached for comment late Tuesday, when Freudenthal’s order was released.

Eugene Volokh reports on Montana Code § 13–35-218.

NY Archbishop Timothy Dolan writes at the Wall Street Journal (full access via Google): Religious freedom is the lifeblood of the American people, the cornerstone of American government. When the Founding Fathers determined that the innate rights of men and women should be enshrined in our Constitution, they so esteemed religious liberty that they made it the first freedom in the Bill of Rights.

Liberty Counsel: Liberty Counsel is representing the Wegner family after school officials at Shawano High School censored and punished Brandon Wegner, a 15-year-old, for writing an op-ed article explaining the Biblical view of homosexuality and supporting natural mother-father adoption. Liberty Counsel sent a letter to the school demanding it apologize for its unconstitutional and irrational censorship and humiliation of Brandon.

CBS Boston: New Hampshire business owners could soon have the legal right to decide who they serve.

Williamsburg Yorktown Daily: Landon Morrow told the board his club, One Desire, was singled out because it’s religious. He appeared at the meeting with a volunteer from the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization devoted to the legal defense of religious freedom.

Patrick J. Reilly at the Washington Times: Many religious liberty analysts agree that HHS has overstepped its authority. Attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund have written that the HHS exemption “violates the right to religious freedom protected throughout federal law,” including under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the First and 14th amendments to the Constitution.

Eric Russell at Bangor Daily News: The bill took a circuitous route to passage. It was held over from the first session last spring when some groups, including the Maine Family Policy Council, formerly the Maine Christian Civic League, and another group called the Alliance Defense Fund, objected at the last minute . . . The Alliance Defense Fund is a national group headed by Alan Sears, author of a book titled “The Homosexual Agenda,” that has opposed same-sex marriage and equal rights for gays and lesbians.

The Republic (AP): Harris said he forwarded the proposed rules to his attorney, Joel Oster of the Alliance Defense Fund, and will decide how to proceed after consulting with him.

Arkansas News: “In fact, we believe this is very fair. It requires that taxpayer funding not be used to pay for religious instruction. That’s what the Constitution calls for,” she said. Harris said he has been consulting with the Alliance Defense Fund in Scottsdale, Ariz., about the matter. He said a lawsuit is a possibility, but “my goal is not to sue the state. My goal is for the state to do the right thing.

God and Country : The band Aiden has announced it will be playing the atheist festival “Rock Beyond Belief” at Fort Bragg in March 2012, as the lead-in act to Richard Dawkins, the main attraction at the “concert.”

Daily Crux: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to introduce a very simple piece of legislation to repeal the infamous Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, quietly signed into law by the president on New Year’s Day.

The Blog of Legal Times: Maryland man is suing U.S. Supreme Court Marshal Pamela Talkin, claiming that the rules barring protesters from displaying signs on the high court’s grounds are unconstitutional. Harold Hodge Jr., according to the complaint (PDF) . . .

Sacramento Bee: Dean of Students Mark Davis, a spokesman for the university, says the group’s mission is not aligned with the conservative religious university’s beliefs on sexual morality.

Chemeketa Community College revises policies after interaction with ADF attorneys representing pro-life students

ADF Attorney Casey Mattox at the SpeakUpMovement.org University Blog: Even at the time of Roe, some were concerned that legalized abortion would lead to compelled participation in abortion, a concern that was not misplaced as ACLU attorneys were working in Montana to force Catholic hospitals to perform sterilizations. The Supreme Court acknowledged but dismissed that concern, holding only that “the attending physician, in consultation with his patient, is free to determine, … the patient’s pregnancy should be terminated.”

ADF President and General Counsel Alan E. Sears at the TellADF Blog: Our Christian brother Ray Arneson finds his mission fields close to home. For two years, for instance, he made regular visits to the campus of South Mountain Community College, in his home town of Mesa, Arizona, to peacefully share the Good News with any students and other passers-by who showed an interest in hearing more about Jesus.

News from The Associated Press: The House has passed a bill confirming the use of religious symbols at military memorials. It was also voting on legislation to order that a prayer issued by Franklin Roosevelt on D-Day be installed at the World War II memorial in Washington.

Herald-mail.com: O’Malley, a Democrat who is making same-sex marriage a priority of his legislative agenda this year, said bill drafters were especially sensitive to protecting religious freedom in hopes of persuading lawmakers — as well as the state’s voters — to support the legislation.

WTOP.com: A battle over whether child-placement agencies should be allowed to discriminate against prospective parents and children based on their sexual orientation has moved to the General Assembly.

Florida Independent: A bill that would allow students to pray during school events passed through its final state Senate committee yesterday.

The Thomas More Law Center announced today that it has appealed a controversial decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court. The appeal was filed in the case of Bradley Johnson v. Poway Unified School District late last week.

Wyoming Tribune: Jonathan Skruggs is an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of WyWatch. The Alliance Defense Fund is an Arizona-based Christian civil rights group that has litigated against same-sex marriage in California. The group also has supported the recent, unsuccessful push in Wyoming to change state law to specify that the state shouldn’t recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

AP on Your West Valley News: Surprise: A group of Christian attorneys have filed a lawsuit against the Dysart Unified School District in federal court for prohibiting fliers for a Christian club. The suit was filed Thursday by the Alliance Defense Fund.

William McGurn at WSJ.com: Less predictable—and far more interesting—has been the heat from the Catholic left, including many who have in the past given the president vital cover.

AP on NECN.com: Scruggs told Freudenthal that the commission action adopting the new rule the week after the group filed its lawsuit “shows that the defendants are not interested in constitutional compliance — they’re interested in avoiding judicial sanction.” The state never responded to the group’s letter last year threatening legal action, he said . . . We believe that if you look at the picture, it’s not offensive at all,” Scruggs said of the group’s picture of a fetus. “It’s an unborn child, it’s not an aborted child.” [more . . . ]

PhillyBurbs.com: Jordan Lorence of the Alliance Defense Fund, the legal advocacy group assisting NYC churches, said “They can’t use the Bronx Household case as some kind of all-purpose permission slip to banish private worship services from every public venue. Churches and other religious groups should be able to meet in public buildings on the same terms as other community groups,” argued Lorence. “These churches offer the people in hurting communities hope and help for their daily needs. To drive out the churches based on a discredited, extreme notion of ‘separation of church and state’ benefits no one and harms people who need help most.” This statement makes good sense. However, do you really think the liberal elites would be satisfied removing “just one church” from using public building?

UPI.com: The U.S. Supreme Court last week passed up the chance to decide whether opening up a public meeting with a sectarian prayer, usually invoking the name of Jesus — a practice carried out in broad swaths of Red State America — is constitutional.

Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel Joel Oster will be available for media interviews following a hearing Tuesday in which he will argue that a Texas appeals court should not grant El Paso Mayor John Cook’s request to stop a recall election against him and two city council members.

Religion Clause: The National Center for Science Education reported last week that so far this year, six separate anti-evolution bills have been introduced . . .

Kaiser Health News: he United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is promising a legal challenge to federal rules the Obama administration reaffirmed Friday requiring health insurers to provide women with a range of preventive health services, including birth control, without charging a co-payment, co-insurance or deductible.

Grace-Marie Turner at National Review Online: The Obama administration announced today it will wait for a year (coincidentally until after the elections) before requiring religious organizations to comply with an Obamacare mandate that they provide coverage for contraception — including controversial drugs that can abort an early pregnancy.

IrishCentral: The American Civil Liberties Union has insisted on the right of political candidates of all kinds to walk in the Dublin Ohio St.Patrick’s Day parade.

ADF Attorney Matt Bowman at the Christian Post: In one of the lesser-known manipulations of U.S. law to advance the pro-abortion agenda, the President’s Department of Justice has for several years been availing itself of a statute originally written to stop violence to instead seek massive fines and injunctions against peaceful pro-life advocates who offer alternatives to women on public sidewalks. But this politicization of the law in favor of abortion yielded a mixed record this week.

OneNewsNow.com: ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco says courts around the country have ruled such policies to be unconstitutional. “[Courts have ruled] that when the school district opens up a forum for outside groups to promote their events and activities to students and their parents, they have to grant equal access to religious organizations so they can promote their religious events and activities on equal terms,” the attorney explains.

OneNewsNow.com: “The university will allow political speakers to come on campus without having to [jump through] these hoops and go over these burdens. But for our client’s religious speech, he has to get insurance, pay money, [and] do all these difficult things,” Scruggs explains. [more . . . ]

The Republic: As long as the course is objective, it’s constitutional, said David Cortman, a lawyer with Phoenix-based Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal group that supports the Bible classes.
“I believe it’s an extremely important type of course to provide just because our culture is so saturated with biblical reference and biblical allusions,” Cortman said.

Michael A. Walsh at NYPOST.com: Friday’s ruling by the Department of Health and Human Services proved yet again that ObamaCare’s critics are right. It’s a breathtaking attack not only on the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom, but also on the separation of church and state.

AP on KTAR.com: The Arizona Republic says the suit was filed Thursday by the Alliance Defense Fund.

Anchorage Daily News: The main problem as the Alliance Defense Fund sees it is that private business owners could be forced to hire or do business with people whose sexual orientation doesn’t match their religious beliefs, said Holly Carmichael, a lawyer for the fund. “The ultimate concern with enacting something like that is that it infringes on religious freedoms,” Carmichael said. “There’s a huge constitutional concern here.” [more . . . ]

Tucson Citizen – News from The Arizona Republic: “The fliers of Christian groups shouldn’t be banned while other groups can freely invite students to their meetings and activities,” said Jeremy Tedesco, an attorney for the Alliance Defense Fund, in a statement. “That’s the position of numerous federal court rulings, and Dysart’s flier policies fit the mold of those that have been declared unconstitutional.” [more . . . ]

The Republic: Jonathan Scruggs, a Tennessee lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund who is representing WyWatch Family Action, also declined comment on the state’s claim that its new policy should end the legal action. The Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based Christian civil rights group, has litigated against same-sex marriage in California. The group also supported the recent unsuccessful push in Wyoming to change state law to specify that the state shouldn’t recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.

Phoenix New Times: Other school districts have been sued successfully for doing the same thing, notes Jeremy Tedesco of the Alliance Defense Fund, which is providing legal services for the CEF along with the Center for Arizona Policy. He’s right: The Scottsdale Unified School District used to have such a policy, but a 2003 lawsuit brought with the help of the ADF reversed it.

Amy Ridenour’s National Center Blog: According to experts in tax law, Jarrett’s overt criticism of Republicans may have violated IRS rules that bar churches from engaging in partisan activism. Eric Stanley, senior legal counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund (a critic of such laws), told the Daily Caller: “It is problematic under current regulations.”

ACLJ Attorney David French at National Review Online: Even worse, at the same time that the mayor declared that “no neighborhood” in New York was “off-limits to God’s love and mercy,” he was enforcing a unique-in-the-nation policy that in fact declared New York City schools “off-limits” to private religious use that includes worship. My friend, the Alliance Defense Fund’s Jordan Lorence, explained the problem in yesterday’s New York Post:

Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy: The Shawano High School newspaper decided to run dueling student opinion pieces on whether same-sex couples should be able to adopt children; the student article that answered the question “no” said, among other things, quotes Leviticus 20:13 (“If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.”). The school district then publicly apologized for the column, as an “[o]ffensive article[] cultivating a negative environment of disrespect . . .

The Hill: Most healthcare plans will be required to cover birth control without charging co-pays or deductibles starting Aug. 1, the Obama administration announced Friday.

Edge Boston: “She sat down and looked at me, and her first question was, ’Are you a lesbian?’” Garatie said in a personal statement written that was published by the Dallas Voice. “Her second question to me was, ’Have you asked God into your heart? Have you been saved by Jesus Christ?’”

Dallas Observer: “Nurse at Center of Furor Over Homophobic Remarks Made to Marine Has Left Dallas VA”

Lincy Pandithurai, who allegedly told her, among other things, “The reason you are so upset is because you feel the darkness surrounding you, and you feel guilty about being a homosexual and living in sin. I’m going to prescribe you some anti-depressants, maybe they’ll help, but I’m not saying that you aren’t going to continue to want to kill yourself.”

Omaha.com: In the Legislature, State Sen. Beau McCoy’s Legislative Bill 912 would amend state law to prohibit local governments from creating new classes of residents protected from discrimination.

Pensacola News Journal: State Sen. Greg Evers is backing a proposed law that would legalize prayer at special school events such as graduation. It’s an effort a lawyer who has battled school prayer in Santa Rosa County calls meaningless “political theater.”

Deseret News: The caucus is affiliated with Pray USA, an initiative of the Congressional Prayer Caucus Foundation Inc., which seeks to “preserve the Judeo-Christian heritage of our nation and protect American religious liberty.”

See, e.g.: Supreme Court ruling confuses religious workers

Freedom from Religion Foundation: The Freedom From Religion Foundation this afternoon filed a formal complaint with the State of Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights, alleging “illegal discrimination based on religion” when a flower shop in Cranston refused, on the basis of religion, to fill an order to send a dozen roses to Jessica Ahlquist.

ADF files suit for censoring Christian club’s flier as too ‘religious’

ADF Attorneys Brett Harvey and Dave Cortman at the Washington Examiner: Therefore, the core question remains unanswered: Must the government force prayer-givers to avoid the name of Jesus (or other specific deity names) when they pray before legislative meetings? The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit said yes, but the rest of the country still says no. That conflict means the Supreme Court may yet weigh in on the question.

Urban Faith: Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) senior counsel Jordan Lorence told members of the media that New York City’s policy has been in place for 30-40 years, but that a 2002 federal injunction against The Bronx Household of Faith put other houses of worship at risk. (In that case, Bronx Household of Faith was represented by ADF.) “It’s not required for the school district to keep it. They can get rid of the policy,” he said. “The mayor can do that. The state legislature can do that.” “Of the largest 50 school districts in the country in terms of student population, only New York City has a policy banning worship services on the weekends or weeknights in the public schools,” said Lorence.

The issue and relevant documents here.

OneNewsNow.com: Though a Florida legislative bill to allow prayer at public school events has made it through the Senate Judiciary Committee, opponents warn it could be unconstitutional.

ADF Attorney Jordan Lorence at the NY Post: Come Feb. 12, Mayor Bloomberg and the city Department of Education are set to ban religious groups from off-hour use of public schools for worship services. This contradicts New York City’s commitment to diversity, freedom of expression and accommodation of diverse religious beliefs — and there’s still time to reverse course.

Michael Foust at Baptist Press: Jim Campbell, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund — which is representing the Methodist group — said the cases prove that there is harm to religious liberty when states legalize gay “marriage” or civil unions or pass broad legislation incorporating sexual orientation into non-discrimination laws. “When people hear that their legislature is considering a law like this and they think, ‘What’s the harm?’ they need to realize that there is this direct threat to religious liberty — to business owners, employees, religious entities and people who attend all those religious entities,” Campbell told Baptist Press. “These four cases are a good demonstration of that. People who are concerned about religious liberty should be concerned about these legal developments.”

ADF Attorney Dave Cortman appeared on the Drew Mariani Show to discuss the Forsyth prayer case. | MP3 audio 8:20 mins

Baptist Press (includes video of the prayer): When pastor and seminary professor Hershael York took the podium to offer a prayer prior to the Kentucky governor’s address to state legislators, senators and representatives likely didn’t expect to hear an appeal to God to defeat one of the governor’s chief legislative proposals. But they did.