Tag Archives: State: North Carolina

NewsObserver.com: Senate Bill 132 requires that the state’s health curriculum teach preventable causes of preterm birth including induced abortion, smoking, alcohol consumption, illicit drug use and poor prenatal care.

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

PilotOnline.com: A bill banning private insurers from offering abortion coverage through future online marketplaces has cleared the North Carolina House.

MyFox8.com: The Rockingham County school board has voted against opening its public meetings with a prayer in a 7-3 vote on Monday night.

US Newswire at Wall Street Journal: Today, the United States District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina granted a motion to include Liberty Institute’s clients, The American Legion and The American Legion Post 290 of King, N.C., in a pending lawsuit over the constitutionality of a veterans memorial in King’s Central Park. A copy of the order can be viewed at https://www.libertyinstitute.org/document.doc?id=81.

LifeNews: Following the murder conviction of abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell, the North Carolina health department has shut down an abortion clinic.

WRAL.com: Legislation meant to clarify when and how student-led prayers are allowed in public schools has passed the North Carolina Senate.

WRAL.com: Senate Bill 132 says the state’s mandated health curriculum on reproductive health and safety “shall include information about the preventable causes of preterm birth, including induced abortion as a cause of preterm birth in subsequent pregnancies.”

Citizen-Times.com: Bills protecting organizational rights of student groups and student-led prayer are advancing in the North Carolina Senate.

Religion Clause Blog: According to the Winston-Salem Journal, one member of the school board isn’t waiting for the vote. Board member Leonard Pryor announced Friday that he is resigning from the board. In a written statement decrying political polarization of the school board, Pryor said that the vote on prayer could open board members individually to lawsuits, and he is not willing to jeopardize his family’s future over the issue.

Salisbury Post: Rowan County commissioners have added another high-profile attorney to their defense team in the Lund vs. Rowan County lawsuit over public-meeting prayers . . . on the contract Sides added to the agenda, Klukowski describes himself as “an Indiana-licensed attorney on faculty at Liberty University School of Law and an allied attorney affiliated with the Alliance Defending Freedom.”

NewsObserver: North Carolina’s 115 public school systems would lose the right to take their local board of county commissioners to court for more funding under a bill filed in the state Senate.

RR Daily Herald: Abortion-rights advocates and political observers say a series of measures in the North Carolina General Assembly adding new restrictions for the procedure could set up the first test of wills between the GOP majority in the legislature and Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.

High Point Enterprise: When can students at a public school in North Carolina voluntarily and independently pray on school grounds? A bill introduced recently — and co-sponsored by state Sen. Stan Bingham, R-Davidson — would clarify the instances and situations where prayer at public schools would and wouldn’t be permitted. Senate Bill 370 . . .

WSOCTV.com: A new bill introduced in North Carolina’s House on Wednesday would stop “a person from performing or attempting to perform an abortion when the sex of the unborn child is a significant factor in seeking the abortion.”

WBTV.com: Rowan County Commission Chairman Jim Sides told WBTV that commissioners had a “very good” meeting with representatives of the National Center for Life and Liberty on Tuesday night.

WRAL: A bill filed by Republican lawmakers would allow North Carolina to declare an official religion, in violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Bill of Rights, and seeks to nullify any federal ruling against Christian prayer by public bodies statewide . . . House Bill 494, a resolution filed by Republican Rowan County Reps. Harry Warren and Carl Ford, would refuse to acknowledge the force of any judicial ruling on prayer in North Carolina – or indeed on any Constitutional topic . . .

GOQNotes: “No state employee should experience discrimination on the job because of the color of their skin, their age, their religion, where they were born, any disability they may have, or who they love,” Sen. Josh Stein (D-Wake), the sponsor of the Senate version of the bill introduced Thursday, said in a press release

Charlotte Observer: A Salisbury church is getting ready to show support for Rowan County commissioners who are facing a legal battle because they pray before county meetings.

Salisbury Post: . . . How much longer will citizens across this country duck their heads in the sand when faced with ACLU lawsuits that threaten to erode the rights given to us by the U.S. Constitution? It’s natural to have fear. But I imagine many of the Rowan citizens have faced fear in their lives and did not surrender to those fears. There is no guarantee what the outcome will be in your case. But one thing is for sure — if you give up, then the battle is already lost. The ACLU is not always right. Sometimes doing the right thing involves pain and sacrifice. I never wade into litigation lightly. Your county is being sued. You have a right to defend against the lawsuit. The commissioners are charged with the duty to do just that. They are fulfilling that duty. Bryce D. Neier is a Fayetteville attorney and volunteer with the Alliance Defending Freedom. He notes the article above is “my private response and comment. It is not endorsed by any particular attorney involved in this case nor any county official. I am responsible for its contents.”

Winston-Salem Journal: The Christian prayer delivered before the Davie County Board of Commissioners meeting March 4 violated the Constitution, according to the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.

AP: North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan said Wednesday she backs marriage rights for same-sex couples, joining a growing number of Democratic Party politicians ahead of her re-election race next year.

Salisbury Post: Attorney David Gibbs III of the National Center for Life and Liberty will defend the Rowan County commissioners’ use of sectarian prayer, and he won’t charge the county for doing so . . . Sides said other organizations, like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the American Center for Law and Justice, are expected to file supplemental briefs in support of the county.

The Stokes News: Americans United for Separation of Church and State has sent the Stokes County Board of Education attorney another letter regarding the school system’s inclusion of prayer at board meetings and graduations.

Salisbury Post: A fight few people want
Fayetteville attorney Bryce Neier with Alliance Defending Freedom told commissioners what they wanted to hear. The alliance helped Forsyth County fight a similar suit — unsuccessfully — and he seemed to urge Rowan to fight, too, saying it would be a tough case to litigate but not a hopeless one. No surprise there, either. Private organizations stepped forward to pay the legal bills for Forsyth’s five-year fight. Beyond that, the court decision also required the county to pay the plaintiff’s court bill, which was more than $248,000. But this is not about money, even though it’s objectionable for commissioners to use county money to fight their personal religious battles. The suit is about recognizing that we are a community of many denominations, faiths and creeds. | WSCOCTV: Rowan Co. Commissioners vote to hire attorney
Includes video and poll currently shows 82% support the move.

Salisbury Post (AP) (includes video): “Do I think we can raise hundreds of thousands of dollars? I certainly do, and I think there are people out there who will come forward with that money. We’re not prepared to accept money at this time, but those are decisions we’ll make later on how that will be handled.” . . . Vice Chairman Craig Pierce started the emergency meeting at 4:30 p.m. with a Christian invocation and commissioners quickly went into closed session to speak with county attorney Jay Dees. He was joined by attorney Bryce Neier of the Alliance Defending Freedom.

Myfox8.com: Bryce Neier, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom, encouraged commissioners to stand up to the ACLU. He said their personal rights don’t get checked when they walk into a county commission meeting.a

WISTV.com: Reverend Bill Godair, pastor of Cornerstone Church, says he is pledging $10,000 to fight the American Civil Liberties Union over the issue.

Charlotte Observer: Rowan County commissioners are scheduled to hold their first public meeting Monday evening since being sued by the American Civil Liberties Union for refusing to stop opening their meetings with a Christian prayer.

ACLU: The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, details how more than 95 percent of board meetings since 2007 have opened with prayers specific to one religion, Christianity . . . The lawsuit, Lund, et al. v. Rowan County, can be found at acluofnc.org . . . More information can be found at: www.aclu.org/religion-belief/lund-et-al-v-rowan-county

Religion Clause Blog: In Thigpen v. Cooper, (NC Ct. App., March 5, 2013), a North Carolina state appellate court, without reaching the merits of the claim, dismissed a suit seeking a declaratory judgment that three of the state’s marriage statutes are unconstitutional.

Matt Sharp on the Zeb Bell Show to discuss this: Letter pins down legality of NC wrestler’s prayer. | MP3 audio 17:20 mins

WSOCTV.com: A national nonprofit is threatening to sue Union County officials over invocations at county commissioners meetings.

One News Now: Alliance Defending Freedom isn’t buying the “delaying the match” argument. ADF attorney Jeremy Tedesco explains why the one-point penalty was unjust – and why the NCHSAA’s explanation just does not make sense. “Secular activities, like waving to your parents or wishing the other wrestler good luck with a shake of the hand or shaking the ref’s hand – if they were two seconds long, it probably wouldn’t have resulted in any kind of a penalty,” the ADF senior legal counsel offers. “Yet for some reason, this referee decided to penalize this wrestler for kneeling down and praying for a couple of seconds. It’s just completely unwarranted.” ADF addressed the incident in a letter . . .

WNCT.com: A national non-profit group sent a letter to the Mayor of Greenville demanding the council stop praying before city meetings.

The Stokes News: Alliance Defending Freedom has agreed to provide counsel at no charge to the city. The Alliance Defending Freedom, “a civil liberties education and legal defense organization that provides legal representation,” will face off against Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Both groups have handled cases garnering national attention.

NewsObserver: The first abortion bill of the session has been filed. Senate Bill 132 would require that students be taught that abortion can cause premature births in subsequent pregnancies. Whether that’s true or not is a matter of some dispute among medical professionals, and a committee of the state Child Fatality Task Force heard from doctors on both sides in November. But it was one of the recommendations the full task force ultimately included in its list for legislators to consider this session.

Robert Knight at Townhall: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has lost its six-year campaign to tear down a Ten Commandments monument at the Dixie County, Florida courthouse. They’ve even lost their usual extortion money for harassing a community.

World Net Daily: In a letter, David A. Cortman and other attorneys in the Alliance Defending Freedom told the North Carolina High School Athletics Association it has “a constitutional duty to protect students’ First Amendment right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.” . . . “We do not believe that the NCHSAA fulfilled that duty in this case and we find the comments made by Mr. Whitfield in support of the NCHSAA referee’s actions deeply troubling,” said the ADF letter. ADF has given the North Carolina group until March 6 to answer whether it will take steps “to ensure that students’ right to express their faith at school athletic events is respected in the future.”

World Net Daily: They’re targeting 12 key states: Colorado, Iowa, Louisiana, Montana, Alaska, Arkansas, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia. The strategy was profiled Monday by David Brody of CBN News. Brody said the groups – led by the American Renewal Project – are planning briefings for evangelical pastors, voter-registration drives and other events in an attempt “to restore American to its Judeo-Christian heritage.”

Yahoo News: North Carolina high school wrestling official issued a warning to a Wake Forest-Rolesville (Wake Forest, N.C.) High competitor for praying prior to a match, eventually costing him a point and leading to a 3-0 loss, according to the Raleigh News & Observer.

Charlotte Observer: Wake Forest-Rolesville’s coach said he will ask for clarification of a rule that led an official to give one of his wrestlers a warning for taking a kneel to pray on the mat before his match Tuesday. Sam Hershey, though, said he has no plans to report the official’s decision to the N.C. High School Athletic Association for wrongdoing.

Todd Starnes at Fox News: It’s been a season-long tradition for Nicholas Fant to drop to one knee and offer a two-second prayer before his wrestling matches. But on Tuesday, that two-second prayer got the Wake Forest-Rolesville High School student in trouble.

Daily Tar Heel: As implementation of the Affordable Care Act begins to take shape in North Carolina, the question of whether abortions will be covered in the state’s health care exchange remains unanswered.

Alliance Defending Freedom has sent a letter to the North Carolina High School Athletic Association explaining why a wrestling official’s penalty against a high school wrestler who prayed for two seconds at the beginning of a match is unconstitutional.

The New American: There appears to be a new rule in North Carolina’s high school wrestling rule book: Prayer is prohibited.

Religion Clause Blog: According to the Durham News & Observer, a Durham, North Carolina state trial court yesterday, finding no likelihood of success on the merits, denied a temporary restraining order against amplified music played at a popular local church.

National Review Bench Memos: North Carolina is an important front in the ongoing battle over our nation’s state courts, as I’ve written about before.  Last Thursday, Republican North Carolina state senators Jerry Tillman and Thom Goolsby presented legislation to introduce partisan affiliations to judicial elections.

LifeNews: The North Carolina Department of Health has cited an abortion clinic, A Preferred Women’s Center in Charlotte for multiple violations. The report comes after a local pro-life advocate filed a complaint with the department about conditions at the facility after she witnessed a medical emergency there in October, 2012.

Charlotte Observer: Rep. Jacqueline Schaffer, R – A newcomer from southeast Charlotte, she won her seat by winning the primary in her heavily Republican district and ran unopposed in the fall. A 31-year-old lawyer, she’s counsel to her family-run executive search firm. She has worked with conservative policy groups, including “Alliance Defending Freedom,” a group that advocates for religious liberty and traditional values.

he Fourth Circuit Court found that the town government did not violate the First Amendment by fining the late David Bowden for the message he had painted on his house in 2009. Three judges unanimously overturned a lower-court decision in the Bowden estate’s favor. “We acknowledge that the Town’s Sign Ordinance, and in particular its application to Bowden, has aggravated some Cary residents who believe it excessively restrictive,” wrote Judge Albert Diaz. “But their recourse here lies with the ballot, not the Constitution.”

LifeNews: Over the next 30 days, North Carolina is expected to become the site for the next battle over President Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Former Gov. Bev Purdue had begun to implement the state-based exchanges under the ACA, however the newly sworn-in Republican Gov. Pat McCrory has put on hold those plans, at least for now.

LifeNews: Over the next 30 days, North Carolina is expected to become the site for the next battle over President Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Former Gov. Bev Purdue had begun to implement the state-based exchanges under the ACA, however the newly sworn-in Republican Gov. Pat McCrory has put on hold those plans, at least for now.

The Hill: Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.) on Thursday blasted a federal grant to a North Carolina college that requires the college library to “introduce Muslim cultures to Americans.”

The Stokes News: Alliance Defending Freedom will come to the city’s aid in the case of Steven Hewett vs. City of King. The Alliance has agreed to provide counsel at no charge to the city. The King City Council unanimously approved the appointment of the ADF during a meeting Monday night. [more]

WBTW.com: The state of North Carolina is appealing a federal judge’s ruling that it can’t offer anti-abortion license plates unless it also makes plates available for people who support abortion rights.

JDNews.com: An area church rallied outside the Onslow County Courthouse and the Onslow County School Board building this week, on a mission to put prayer back in schools.

AP: Republican Rep. Tim Scott of South Carolina will become the seventh black person to serve in the United State Senate and the first from the South since Reconstruction.

National Review Bench Memos: In a move that surprised no one, North Caroline governor Bev Perdue has appointed appellate judge Cheri Beasley to the Supreme Court of North Carolina

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.

MSN.com: The Alliance Defending Freedom criticized the decision, saying it robbed the grade schooler of her First Amendment rights. School reps are now meeting to discuss the situation and come up with a policy should this happen again in the future.

Fox News (includes video): The Alliance Defending Freedom, which advocates religious freedom, criticized the school’s decision in a statement. “The censorship of this young student’s poem about her grandfather is repugnant to the First Amendment rights of all students and sends an impermissible message of hostility towards religion,” the group argued.

Matt Sharp appeared on KNRS with Patrick Wiscombe to discuss this: ‘God’ censored in 1st grader’s Veteran’s Day poem. | MP3 audio 7:17 mins

National Review Bench Memos: North Carolina governor Bev Perdue has issued an executive order ”temporarily modifying” a previous executive order in which she established a so-called “merit selection” system for appointing judges. Under the terms of her new EO, she will simply appoint a nominee of her choosing rather than select from a panel of nominees submitted by an independent commission.

WWWNTRadio: An attorney for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which advocates for religious rights and freedoms, criticized the school’s decision. “America’s public schools should encourage, not restrict, the constitutionally protected freedom of students to express their faith,” said Matt Sharp, legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, in a statement. “Students should not be censored when speaking about their faith or honoring those who valiantly served to protect our freedoms. … The censorship of this young student’s poem about her grandfathers is repugnant to the First Amendment rights of all students and sends an impermissible message of hostility towards religion.”

Matt Sharp appeared on the Bob Dutko Show | MP3 audio 11:05 mins | Related Alliance Defending Freedom press releases: ‘Christmas’ trees axed at NC college and Good grief! Atheist group disgruntled with ‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’

Matt Sharp appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show to discuss this: ‘God’ censored in 1st grader’s Veteran’s Day poem. | MP3 audio 5:37 mins

Jordan Lorence at the Speak Up Movement University Blog: Each year, many liberals and secularists deny that there is any effort by anyone to censor Christmas. They claim that “Religious Right” leaders diabolically promote a phoney “War on Christmas” in order to bamboozle ignorant and gullible Christians into donating money for their efforts to thwart this allegedly nonexistent threat.

The Hill: Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) warned his conference on Wednesday that leaders are “watching” how the rank-and-file vote to determine committee assignments, according to sources in the closed-door meeting.

Matt Sharp appeared on Viewpoints Radio with Lockwood Phillips to discuss this: ‘God’ censored in 1st grader’s Veteran’s Day poem. | MP3 audio 23:23 mins

Matt Sharp appeared on KMCO with Greg Knapp last week to discuss the Christmas Tree controversy at Western Piedmont College. | MP3 audio 7:16 mins

Ed News: A school district in North Carolina has been given a deadline to affirm that it will not censor a student’s speech, or a legal team assembled by the Alliance Defending Freedom will seek a “remedy” to the problem . . . But in a letter sent from ADF to the McDowell County Schools in Marion, N.C., the lawyers pointed out that the censorship “was a violation of her First Amendment rights.” . . . [more]

Dave Cortman on the Janet Mefferd Show. | MP3 audio 15:37 mins

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.

Matt Sharp appeared on WTAM 1100 with Bob Frantz. | MP3 audio 9:10 mins | Related: NC College restores Christmas tree