Tag Archives: State: Alabama

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.

Times-Journal.com: : Standard insurance plans offered in Alabama would not cover elective abortions if a bill offered by state Sen. Shadrack McGill becomes law.

WAAYTV.com- Huntsville, Alabama Television (includes video): It all started when the board of education received a complaint from a family in the school system and the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
They say the so-called “Bible Man”….who leads a program to help students earn Bibles should not be allowed because it’s unconstitutional.

The Montgomery Advertiser | montgomeryadvertiser.com: However, former state Attorney General Charlie Graddick, who is now the presiding circuit court judge in Mobile County, raised more in 2011 than Malone and former Chief Justice Roy Moore.

WHNT.com (includes video): There’s a holiday controversy with school children caught in the middle. Someone protested the use of ‘Silent Night’ in a Christmas program at G.W. Trenholm School in Tuscumbia.

OneNewsNow.com: Roy Moore announced his bid for the post at news conference Tuesday morning on the steps of the Alabama Judicial Building in Montgomery.

Jonathan Berry at The Federalist Society: April Mack sued to recover for the wrongful death of her unborn child, who miscarried after a car accident. The Alabama Supreme Court ultimately vindicated her right to recovery, despite her having miscarried her child before the point of viability. In order to do so, the court found that viability made no sense as a prerequisite to wrongful-death recovery, holding an unborn child’s gestational age irrelevant as a matter of law. Conspicuously, the court never saw fit to even mention the U.S. Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence and its treatment of viability.

Houston Chronicle (includes video): Hundreds of people turned out to demonstrate their concern over a move to stop pregame prayers at a high school in northwest Alabama.

AL.com: The incidents such as those experienced by Smith are all too common in Alabama schools, said state Rep. Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham, Alabama’s first openly lesbian legislator. Last week she pre-filed legislation to expand anti-bullying policies to explicitly prohibit harassment in schools on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

CBS News: U.S. District Judge Sharon Blackburn, appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush, wrote in her 115-page opinion that some parts of the law are in conflict with federal statutes, but others aren’t.

The Arab Tribune: Arab and Guntersville high school football fans are rivals, but they came together Friday night. Spectators in both sets of bleachers could be heard reciting The Lord’s Prayer shortly before kickoff.

The Republic: Bay Minette has decided to delay a new program that is supposed to give first-time, nonviolent offenders the choice of jail time or going to church each week for a year.

Times-Journal.com: Arab City Schools Superintendent John Mullins announced earlier this week he would reverse a policy he started a decade ago allowing every home football game at Arab High School to start with a prayer.

The Clanton Advertiser: Students in Chilton County will have the chance to rise with the sun and gather at their schools’ flagpoles for an early-morning organized prayer event called See You At The Pole on Wednesday, Sept. 28.

Authorities say non-violent offenders in southern Alabama will have a new choice: Go to jail, or go to church every Sunday for a year . . .

The Arab Tribune: Superintendent John Mullins has received a letter from the Freedom from Religion Foundation in Madison, Wis., calling prayer before the games a “serious and flagrant violation” of the First Amendment and asking that the school district take immediate action to stop any and all prayers occurring before any school-sponsored event.

LifeSiteNews.com: In a unanimous decision last Friday, the Alabama Supreme Court expanded legal protections for the unborn child when it ruled that Alabama’s wrongful death statute applied to the unborn child at any stage of development. This means that an offender can be tried civilly for the death of an unborn child regardless of viability.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled Friday a Birmingham-area woman can sue over the death of her unborn baby in a car wreck in 2007 even though the fetus couldn’t have lived outside the womb, a decision that expands the rights of people to sue over the death of the unborn.

Al.com: Hoover High School today reversed its decision to stop a student from wearing a T-Shirt expressing acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle.

Washington Times: Alabama on Thursday officially became the fifth state in the nation to restrict abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, the latest in a wave of new state efforts to curb the practice this year.

AP: Blackburn didn’t address whether the law is constitutional. Instead, she says she needs more time to consider lawsuits filed by the Justice Department, private groups and individuals that claim the state is overstepping its bounds with the law.

Religion Clause: WSFA reports that a federal lawsuit challenging Alabama’s new immigration law was filed yesterday by leaders of the Episcopal, Methodist and Roman Catholic churches in the state. The suit claims that the law (full text) . . .

WSFA 12 News Montgomery, AL :
Alabama Governor Robert Bentley appointed Charles R. “Chuck” Malone, his current Chief of Staff, to be the next Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

AP: Kansas is one of the five states – along with Alabama, Idaho, Indiana and Oklahoma – that enacted abortion bans this year modeled after the groundbreaking fetal-pain bill passed in Nebraska in 2010.

The Washington Post: Civil rights groups sued Friday in federal court to block Alabama’s new law cracking down on illegal immigration, which supporters and opponents have called the strictest measure of its kind in the nation.

Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy: In Friday’s Ex Parte E.R.G., the Alabama Supreme Court struck down the Alabama grandparent visitation statute, holding that it violated the rights of parents. The decision was a splintered 4–3-2 decision, which reflects the Supreme Court’s splintered decision in Troxel v. Granville (2000) — which held that some such laws are unconstitutional, but didn’t decide whether all such laws are unconstitutional. And the opinion among state courts is likewise splintered. I hope to have a chance to blog about this in the next few days. But for now, I just wanted to note this passage from Justice Parker’s concurrence (which also contains various assertions about the Christian basis of American law) . . .

Alabama lawmakers late on Thursday passed a bill that would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, the latest state legislature with Republican majorities to tighten abortion restrictions.

Sandmountainreporter.com: A controversial abortion-related bill that says life begins at the moment an egg is fertilized and attaches to the womb has been delayed in the Alabama House and likely will be on the agenda for the final day of the session on June 9.

The Montgomery Advertiser : Abortion legislation marks one of the biggest signs of change in Alabama’s new Republican-con­trolled Legislature: Six bills that would restrict abortions are far enough along that they might pass in the session’s closing days.

LifeSiteNews.com: The Alabama Senate has approved a slew of pro-life bills that could mark the greatest step forward in state pro-life law since the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision.

LifeSiteNews.com: Following is a list of recent pro-life legislative gains on the state level . . .

Life News: The Alabama state Senate voted today for a bill that would have it join several other states in opting out of funding abortions under the Obamacare health care law the president and his Democratic allies approved.

Dothan Eagle: Alabama Chief Justice Sue Bell Cobb warned the state’s judges and circuit clerks to expect “substantial” layoffs because of the budget crisis in the state judicial system.

Bloomberg Business Week: In the months before Justice David T. Prosser Jr. and challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg faced off in Wisconsin’s Apr. 5 Supreme Court election, unidentified contributors poured $4.4 million into the race—almost six times as much as the candidates spent on the campaign.

LifeNews: An Alabama state Senate committee has backed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which protects unborn children capable of feeling pain. The bill bans abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy as a result.

Greenwich Time: Legislation passed by the Alabama House to stop elective abortions at 20 weeks into a pregnancy is getting its first test in the Senate.

AP: epublicans have moved quickly to convert November election gains to legislative advances in the states. A look at some GOP successes, and setbacks, in the first months of the new order . . .

Christian Newswire: The Foundation for Moral Law and Personhood Alabama have announced personhood bills and amendments in the House and the Senate, backed by a large number of supporters. SB301 is a clear recognition of the personhood rights of all human beings, regardless of their age, size, or location.

NewsTimes.com: “Proponents of a bill banning elective abortions starting at 20 weeks of pregnancy said the Alabama Legislature’s new Republican majority is responsible for the bill getting overwhelming support in a House committee Wednesday.”

Clanton Advertiser: Maplesville High School has been asked to remove the phrase “God Bless America” from its website and a plaque in the school’s front office by a group claiming the endorsements of religion are unconstitutional. The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) . . .

Fox News: An Alabama superintendent is denying allegations that a fifth-grade teacher and a librarian distributed Bibles during class at a public school, saying the claims are either “inaccurate or false.”

The Republic: “The legal director for the ACLU of Alabama, Allison Neal, says the legislation would violate court rulings that states can’t ban abortions before viability.”

Religion Clause Blog: In Berry v. MeadWestvaco Packaging Systems, LLC, (MD AL, March 14, 2011), an Alabama federal district court dismissed a Title VII religious discrimination claim brought by a Seventh Day Adventist employee who was assigned to work at times that conflicted with his scripturally mandated Tuesday and Wednesday evening religious meetings.

Anniston Star: “And on the first day of the 2011 legislative session, Sen. Gerald Dial, R-Lineville, introduced a bill to amend the state constitution to allow the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools and buildings . . . The bill, officially Senate Bill 37, is already being eyed by the Alabama branch of the American Civil Liberties Union . . . ”

AllGov.com: “The Alabama Education Association is suing Governor Robert Bentley over legislation that his predecessor pushed through the legislature in an effort to cripple the union’s political activity.”

The American Spectator: “One would think that Alabama, a state in which teachers unions don’t have the power to force school districts into collective bargaining, would be a bastion of school reform. But within the past year or so, the National Education Association’s Cotton State affiliate has shown there’s more to wielding influence than sitting at negotiating tables.”

Julia Dinn writing at The Washington Post / On Faith: “Al Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, released a statement late Wednesday saying the governor’s comments ‘were completely consistent with mainstream evangelical piety and conviction’ in that those who believe in Jesus are ‘brothers.’ As for those who don’t, there’s always the hope they will come to believe in Christ.”

WSFA: “Before a crowd of reporters and Jewish leaders Wednesday afternoon, Governor Robert Bentley apologized for comments that many considered offensive towards non-Christians.”

7th Space: “Former Salem resident Kenneth Allen Ballard, age 26, was sentenced to 210 months in federal prison for knowingly distributing and receiving child pornography over the Internet, United States Attorney Leura G Canary announced today.”

ACLJ: “There’s been an important victory in a case that we’ve been involved with out of Alabama . . . For over ten years, a federal court injunction against a small group of activists had been used by the clinic and the Birmingham police to intimidate others from standing on the adjacent sidewalks. Being relegated to a distant sidewalk made effective offers of assistance and information difficult or impossible . . . In a written order issued on January 4th, Judge Ed Ramsey agreed with our arguments, and dismissed the lawsuit against Rev. Mahoney and the Christian Defense Coalition.”

Associated Press: “Todd is the only openly gay member of the Legislature and she asked Wednesday if the bill would apply to the woman that is her spouse considering that Alabama law does not recognize gay marriages. Todd said she and her partner were married in another state.”

The Vanguard: “The initial phase for making a change to USA’s Policy of Non-Discrimination is underway. Currently, the Non-Discrimination Policy does not offer protection for students or faculty from discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identification. This week, the Student Government Association (SGA) will discuss a resolution to add a sexual orientation and gender identification clause to the Policy.”

ChristianNewsWire: “On Friday, October 22, 2010, Circuit Court Judge Edward Ramsey for the 10th Judicial District of Jefferson County, Alabama, issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) prohibiting the Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust, their founder, Jeff White, and others, from engaging in constitutionally protected activity . . . This morning the hearing was held and the TRO dissolved.”

The Birmingham News: “The Alabama Supreme Court and Alabama Court of Civil Appeals will be on the Samford University campus today to hear oral
arguments in two cases, including one from Bessemer . . . The state Supreme Court will hear an appeal from a case involving parents who were sued for refusing to let grandparents visit their grandchildren.”

ACLJ Trial Notebook: “Michala is enrolled at a public university on a music scholarship, and was required to take a musical theatre class. One course requirement was to participate in a performance that included two songs that Michala strongly objected to on religious grounds, one that used God’s name in vain and one that declares that the Bible is not necessarily true.”

Associated Press: “Federal officials have indicted the owner of Alabama’s largest casino, four state senators and several top lobbyists in a scheme to buy and sell votes to get electronic bingo legalized.”

Nathan Harden writing at Phi Beta Cons: “During a recent gubernatorial debate held at the University of Alabama, students were reportedly given maps that illustrated approved ‘First Amendment areas’ around campus . . . I invite David French, our resident expert in constitutional law, to correct me if I’m wrong here, but I simply can’t recall ever seeing the cartographic section of the Constitution, showing where the First Amendment applies and where it doesn’t.”

“The amicus brief sent Friday to the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said that the Constitution does not require marriage to include same-sex couples. The 39-page brief also said that states, not federal courts, have final say in whether to allow same-sex marriages.”

Star-Tribune: “Wyoming and nine other states will file a legal brief today saying a federal court ‘exceeded its judicial authority’ when it ruled that the U.S. Constitution requires legal marriage to include same-sex couples. In the amicus brief, which will be filed late this afternoon in the case of Perry vs. Schwarzenegger, the states disagree with the court’s ruling that same-sex marriage is a fundamental right.”

ABC News: “Barbara Ann Wilson says she is surrounded by men surfing the Internet for porn who sometimes grope her and perform lewd acts in front of children, according to a federal lawsuit she has filed against her employer -– the Birmingham Public Library in Alabama.”

EducationNews: “Alabama made national headlines this week when 25 more schools reported they will likely have to extend lines of credit to remain open, in addition to the five schools that borrowed from banks last year.”

OneNewsNow: “The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) has received assurance from the Alabama Community College System that it will no longer make demands on Bethany Divinity College and Seminary to cease offering its associate and bachelor programs in religion, ministry, theological studies, and Bible. ‘The Alabama Board of Education was requiring a purely religious school to become licensed with the state . . . ” explains ADF’s [Daniel Blomberg], the attorney handling the case.”

ChristianWebNews: “‘The government should not attempt to regulate religious programs that are specifically exempt under state law,’ said ADF Senior Litigation Staff Counsel [Daniel Blomberg]. ‘The Alabama Community College System did the right thing here by finally deciding to recognize Bethany’s right to offer associate and bachelor degree levels in its religious programs. State law does not regulate programs that only offer religious degrees, which are the only degrees Bethany Divinity College and Seminary offers.’”

“State had ordered divinity college, seminary to stop offering degrees despite agency’s lack of authority.”

Associated Press: “Victoryland casino closed voluntarily Monday as a court ruling loomed that could allow a raid of Alabama’s largest electronic bingo operation, the last non-Indian casino doing business in the state.”

ChristianNewsWire: “UAB administrators ordered the young people off of the campus claiming that the public university was actually ‘private property.’ When Kristina Garza, Survivors’ new Campus Life Tour director, asked the UAB administrator what right he had to order the group off of public property, the UAB official refused to speak with Garza and would not even provide his name. UAB police responded to the call by administrators and within two minutes arrested the two activists for failing to heed the unreasonable demand to leave the campus and for videotaping the incident. LLDF attorneys made several calls to UAB’s general counsel. Within a few hours, the young people were released from jail with no criminal charges.”

LifeNews: “The national pro-life women’s group Susan B. Anthony List issued a round of endorsements today for pro-life candidates in Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota, and Nevada. SBA List backed two women and two men who face opposition from pro-abortion women in their races for Congress.”

AP: “States have the authority to enforce immigration laws and protect their borders, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox said Wednesday in a legal brief on behalf of nine states supporting Arizona’s immigration law.”

Foundation for Moral Law: “The Foundation for Moral Law (FML) in Montgomery, Alabama, founded by Judge Roy Moore, sent a letter yesterday to the Hoover City Board of Education in Hoover, Alabama, encouraging the Board to bring back invocations at its meetings, despite a threatening anti-prayer letter from a liberal secularist group in Washington,D.C.”

LifeNews: “Officials in this Alabama city are backing down after facing a lawsuit from a pro-life legal group, Life Legal Defense Fund. LLDF says several Birmingham police officers engaged in ‘outrageous civil rights violations’ against nine pro-life advocates who were arrested last year. … Now, a federal district court in Alabama approved a consent order today ensuring that police in Birmingham will not interfere with the expressive activities of the pro-life youth group.”

LifeNews: “The Beacon Women’s Center, placed on temporary probation in 2007 after health problems state inspectors encountered, will close down permanently next week.”

The Samford Crimson: “[House Bill 432], Alabama’s first anti-human trafficking legislation, passed in both houses of the Alabama State Legislature merely hours before the 2010 legislative session ended on Thursday, April 22. The bill, which provides extensive protection for victims of labor and sex trade, will add Alabama to the list of 44 states that have strictly criminalized human trafficking under state law, according to the Polaris project.”

Anniston Star: “In a faxed letter sent to Oxford Superintendent Jeff Goodwin April 23, the national nonprofit Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, claimed Oxford High band director Chris Pennington was violating students’ religious freedoms — protected under the First Amendment — and demanded the problem be corrected immediately. Specifically, the group alleged Pennington was routinely leading his symphonic band class in prayer. The group also alleged Pennington had threatened a failing grade for those symphonic band students who did not show up to perform a concert at a local Baptist church . . . ”

Citizen Link: “Alabama and New Hampshire have both killed bills that would have expanded gambling. In Alabama, SB 380 would have allowed a vote this November on electronic bingo, but it was pulled from consideration by the sponsor . . . ”

WHNT.com (AP): “About a dozen Alexandria High School students went to the Calhoun County School Board office to deliver a message that they want weekly prayer and daily Bible reading resumed over their school’s public address system . . . ”