Religion & Law

77' Cross Goes Up In Texas Subdivision Prayer Garden

Posted on July 29, 2010
Following a settlement last March of a lawsuit attempting to prevent The Coming King Foundation (TCKF) from placing a 77-foot tall cross in a Kerrville, Texas subdivision (see prior posting), on Tuesday the $2 million, 70-ton sculpture was erected overlooking Texas I-10, half way between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans...

Settlement Reached In High Schooler's Suit Against Science Teacher Who Taught Religion In Class

Posted on July 29, 2010
Today's Columbus (OH) Dispatch reports on the settlement of a federal lawsuit brought by the family of a high school student against Mount Vernon, Ohio high school teacher John Freshwater. The lawsuit alleged violations of the Establishment Clause...

Bangladesh Supreme Court Appellate Division Restores Constitutional Provision On Secularism

Posted on July 29, 2010
The Financial Express reports that on Tuesday, the Appellate Division of Bangladesh's Supreme Court upheld, with certain modifications, a High Court decision that declared illegal the Fifth Amendment to Bangladesh's Constitution. The decision restores various articles of the 1972 Constitution, including those that affirm principles of secularism...

Court Upholds Dismissal of Counseling Student Who Would Not Counsel Gays

Posted on July 28, 2010
In Ward v. Wilbanks, (ED MI, July 26 2010), a Michigan federal district court upheld Eastern Michigan University's dismissal of a student from its graduate program in counseling because of her objections to counseling clients on their same-sex relationships, in violation of professional counseling standards...

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ACLU FOIA Request Seeks To Uncover FBI "Muslim Mapping"

Posted on July 28, 2010
In a press release yesterday, the ACLU announced coordinated Freedom of Information Act requests in 29  states and the District of Columbia asking the FBI  to release records on its collection and use of information on ethnic-oriented businesses, behaviors, lifestyle characteristics and cultural traditions in communities with concentrated ethnic populations...

9th Circuit Says Ghanaian Baptist Preacher Entitled To Asylum

Posted on July 28, 2010
In Afriyie v. Holder, (9th Cir., July 26, 2010), the 9th Circuit held that a citizen of Ghana should have been granted asylum in the United States based on his persecution in Ghana by private parties who objected to his proselytizing as a Baptist preacher in predominately Muslim areas of the country...

Muslim Employees Prevail In Two EEOC Cases Involving Religious Accommodation

Posted on July 28, 2010
Muslim employees of two different companies have obtained favorable results after filing complaints with the EEOC. In one case, according to BNA's Daily Labor Report Monday, Swedish-based Electrolux Group has decided to change the evening shift meal breaks during Ramadan this year so employees will be able to break their fast and still abide by company rules that prohibit food on the production floor...

Canadian Appellate Court Opens Door To Refugee Status For U.S. Conscientious Objector to Iraq War

Posted on July 27, 2010
In Hinzman v. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, (Fed. Ct. App., July 6, 2010), Canada's Federal Court of Appeal held than an American soldier's application for permanent residency as a refugee based on "humanitarian and compassionate" grounds may be granted when his refusal to deploy to Iraq was based on a sincere and deeply held moral, political or religious objection to a particular war...

Rabbi Sentenced In Fraud Case From 1980's

Posted on July 27, 2010
In a Manhattan federal court yesterday, Rabbi Avrum Friesel was sentenced to 27 months in jail  and ordered to pay $11 million in restitution for a fraud committed by leaders of the Hasidic village of New Square, New York in the 1980's. Yesterday's New York Post reports that Friesel, after spending eleven years on the run in Israel and Great Britain, plead guilty after being extradited from Britain last year...

New Jersey Appellate Court Says Religious Belief Does Not Excuse Coerced Sex With Wife

Posted on July 27, 2010
In S.D. v. M.J.R., (NJ Super. Ct. App. Div., July 23, 2010), a New Jersey appellate court held that the trial court should have issued a final restraining order to protect a Muslim woman who had been the victim of her husband's domestic violence. The trial court judge had concluded that while the husband's coerced sex with his wife constituted sexual assault, the husband did not have the requisite sexual intent because of his belief that his religion permitted him to require his wife to comply with his sexual demands...

Tennessee Lt. Gov. Questions Freedom of Religion For Muslims

Posted on July 27, 2010
TPMDC reported yesterday that Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, a candidate in the state's gubernatorial primary (currently running third), suggested in an answer to a question at a campaign event that Islam may not be protected by the Constitution's free exercise clause...

Utah High Court Reverses FLDS Leader Warren Jeff's Conviction

Posted on July 27, 2010
The Utah Supreme Court today reversed the rape as an accomplice conviction of FLDS leader Warren Jeffs. (See prior posting.)  In State of Utah v. Jeffs, (UT Sup. Ct., July 27, 2010), a unanimous court held that the jury had been improperly instructed on the issue of consent...

Russian Prosecutors Open Criminal Prosecution Against Scientology Group

Posted on July 26, 2010
Today's Moscow Times reports that prosecutors in the Russian town of Shchyolkovo, northeast of Moscow, have opened a criminal prosecution against the Church of Scientology on the grounds that it is promoting extremism. The action follows an April decision by a Siberian court that added 28 works by Scientology founder L...

Battle Over Conversion Law In Israel Takes 6-Month Pause

Posted on July 26, 2010
Today's Jerusalem Post carries an op-ed by Natan Sharansky, chairman of the Jewish Agency, reviewing the battle that has gone on for the past two weeks in the Israeli Knesset over proposed new legislation on conversion.  As reported by the New York Times on Friday, the bill began as an attempt to make conversion to Judaism easier for 300,000 Russian immigrants who came to Israel but are not considered Jewish under Orthodox religious law...

Reality Show Seeking Progressive Muslim Leader Is Popular In Malaysia

Posted on July 26, 2010
AP reported yesterday on a reality show that is garnering large audiences on an Islamic-themed cable channel in Malaysia. "Imam Muda" (Young Leader) is seeking a pious but progressive young Muslim man who can show that religion can remain relevant to Malaysian young people...

Saudi Clerics Say Muslim Women In France Need Not Wear Veil

Posted on July 26, 2010
As France moves to ban the weraing of the burqa and niqab (see prior posting), Saudi Islamic jurisprudence scholar Mohamed al-Nujaimi and Saudi author and cleric Ayed al-Garni say that Muslim women living in France are exempt from the requirement to cover their face...

Recent Articles and Book of Interest

Posted on July 26, 2010
From SSRN:Ronald R.Garet, To Secure the Blessings, (USC Law Legal Studies Paper No. 10-11, July 19, 2010). Asim Jusic, Legal Regulation of Non-Mainstream Religious Groups: Perspectives from Economics and Social Psychology, (IWM Junior Visiting Fellows' Conferences, Vol...

Paper Reports On Growth of Liberty Institute

Posted on July 25, 2010
Today's Dallas Morning News reports on the growth of the Plano, Texas based Liberty Institute since its founding in in 1997. Its budget has increased to $2 million and it has 20 staffers plus volunteer lawyers across the country to help it litigate from a conservative Christian perspective on religious speech, free exercise and other national conservative issues...

Recent Prisoner Free Exercise Cases

Posted on July 25, 2010
In Muhammad v. Sapp, (11th Cir., July 21, 2010), the 11th Circuit denied a Muslim prisoner's objections under RLUIPA to prison authorities requiring him to wear a close-fitting uniform, refusing to let him have a Qibla compass, requiring him to shower in stalls where he could be seen by other inmates and prison officials, refusing to let him to have 16 gold crowns removed from his teeth, and refusing to provide him with a requested diet...

DC Circuit OKs "In God We Trust" On U.S. Currency

Posted on July 25, 2010
In a brief opinion last week, the D.C. Circuit in Kidd v. Obama, (DC Cir., July 21, 2010), affirming the district court (see prior posting), held that appellants had not demonstrated that printing the national motto "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency is a violation of the Establishment Clause.

High School Will Not Spend Money To Fight ACLU Over Prayer Banner

Posted on July 24, 2010
Fox News yesterday reported that a Cranson, Rhode Island high school will remove or change the wording on a banner that has hung in its auditorium since 1956 rather than spend the amount that would be necessary to fight church-state objections by the ACLU...

University Police Officer Files Religious Discrimination Complaint With EEOC

Posted on July 24, 2010
Today's Baltimore Sun reports on an EEOC complaint that has been filed by a Towson University Police Force officer claiming religious discrimination. John David Brown, a convert to Orthodox Judaism, refused to work on his Sabbath from sundown Friday to Sundown Saturday...

Judge's Handling of Juror Objection To Oath Becomes Primary Election Issue

Posted on July 23, 2010
In Port Angeles,Washington, an incumbent judge's handling of an objection by a juror to being sworn in using the phrase "so help me God" has become an issue in this year's primary election. Today's Peninsula Daily News reports that at a voters' forum, Tim Davis, one of the candidates for Clallam County District Court 1 judge, accused one of his opponents, Judge Rick Porter, of embarrassing Gail Smith, a juror in a DUI trial, by insisting that she include the phrase in the oath...

French Swim Resort Rules Bar "Burkinis"

Posted on July 23, 2010
With a ban on wearing of burqas in public about to see final passage in France (see prior posting), the London Mail today reports that two Muslim women were ordered out of a swimming pool in the southern French city of Port Leucate for wearing "burkinis"...

New California Poll Probes Views On Same Sex Marriage By Religious Affiliation

Posted on July 23, 2010
On Wednesday, the Public Religion Research Institute released a poll examining religous-based attitudes about same-sex marriage among Californians. (Full text of poll report.) (Full text of questions and percentage responses.) Here are some excerpts from the press release's summary of poll findings: ?If another vote similar to Proposition 8 were held tomorrow, a majority (51%) say they would vote to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry...

Conservative Groups Want A Piece of Oral Argument On National Day of Prayer

Posted on July 23, 2010
In April, the U.S. Justice Department filed an appeal with the 7th Circuit in Freedom from Religion Foundation v. Obama, a case in which the district court held that the statute creating a National Day of Prayer violates the Establishment Clause. (See prior posting...

Graduate Student Sues Over Attempt To Impose Remediation Plan To Change Her LGBT Beliefs

Posted on July 23, 2010
A graduate student in the counseling program at Augusta State University in Georgia filed a civil rights lawsuit Wednesday alleging that her free speech, free exercise, equal protection and due process rights were infringed by conditions imposed on her in order for her to remain in the University's program...

Florida Church Will Mark 9/11 With Burning of Qurans

Posted on July 22, 2010
Religion News Service reported yesterday that the Dove World Outreach Center, a non-denominational church in Gainesville, Florida, plans to host an "International Burn A Quran Day" on this year's anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. In response to a Facebook posting, people have been mailing Qurans to the church for it to burn...

Court Says Temple's Board Failed To Authorize Borrowings

Posted on July 22, 2010
In Brighton Way, LLC v. Queen Esther's Temple, Inc., (NY Sup. Ct., July 9, 2010), a New York trial court dismissed plaintiff's attempt to recover $140,000 allegedly due under a note from Queen Esther's Temple, a religious organization. The note was secured by a mortgage, and in a prior action the court held the mortgage failed to comply with provisions of the New York Not-For-Profit Corporation Law that requires court approval for a religious corporation to mortgage or sell its property...

Group Asks IRS To Investigate Campaign E-mail By Non-Profit Religious Group

Posted on July 22, 2010
Americans United announced yesterday that it had sent a letter (full text) to the Internal Revenue Service asking it to investgate a non-profit group "Reclaiming Oklahoma for Christ." The 501(c)(3) group distributed an e-mail urging attendance at a June campaign rally for state Rep...

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