Religion & Law

Evangelist Challenges University's Speech Policy

Posted on July 15, 2009
On Monday, a traveling Christian evangelist filed a federal lawsuit against Georgia Southern University, challenging its campus speech policy. The complaint (full text) in Bloedorn v. Grube, (SD GA, filed 7/13/2009), alleges that while the University has opened accessible areas on campus for outside speakers, it still requires application for a permit and reserves discretion to approve or disapprove any particular speaker...

Malaysian Police Investigate Reporter's Activities In Attending Mass Under False Pretenses

Posted on July 14, 2009
In Malaysia, where causing religious disharmony can be prosecuted as a crime, police are investigating two Muslim men who attended a Roman Catholic mass as part of an investigative article published in the Malay-language Al-Islam magazine. AP today reports that the article was intended to investigate rumors that Muslim teenagers were being converted to Christianity...

Leahy To Introduce Hate Crimes Bill As Amendment To Defense Authorization Act

Posted on July 14, 2009
Sen. Patrick Leahy yesterday announced that he would introduce the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act as a bipartisan amendment to the National Defense Authorization bill this week. Last year the Senate approved the measure as an amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill, but it was removed in conference after opposition from the Bush White House...

Issues of Religion Play Little Role In First Day of Sotomayor Hearings

Posted on July 14, 2009
Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held its first day of hearings on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. The day began with opening statements from each member of the Committee. Then the Senators from Sotomayor's home state of New York (Sens...

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FCC Change In TV Rules Impacts Many Church Wireless Microphone Systems

Posted on July 14, 2009
According to an ABP report yesterday, many churches will be surprised to learn that they have been affected by the Federal Communications Commission's decision requiring television stations, as of June 12, to end analog broadcasts. As part of the conversion, all stations were required to move to channels 2 through 51-- something made possible by the improved efficiency of digital transmissions...

Groups Oppose Expansion of Virginia Islamic Saudi Academy

Posted on July 14, 2009
The Fairfax County, Virginia Board of Supervisors held a public hearing yesterday on the proposed expansion of the campus of the Islamic Saudi Academy. The controversial college and preparatory school has close ties with the Saudi government. Fox News reported yesterday that a coalition of around ten groups oppose the expansion...

Lawsuit In Egypt Seeks To Rescind Prize Given To Controversial Writer

Posted on July 13, 2009
In Egypt, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood have filed a lawsuit seeking to have the Ministry of Culture's State Award of Merit in Social Sciences withdrawn from author Sayed al-Qimni. Al Arabiya today reports that opponents object that: "His works deride Islam and he is skeptical about the message of Prophet Mohamed...

Russian Orthodox Church Gets New Power To Preview Duma Legislation

Posted on July 13, 2009
The Moscow Times reported last week that the Russian Orthodox Church will now be consulted in advance by United Russia deputies in the lower house of legislature so it can preview all legislation that will be considered by the State Duma. The agreement came after Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill conferred with two senior United Russia deputies over the Duma's ratification in May of the European Social Charter...

World Football Regulator Warns Brazil's Team Over Religious Slogans On T-Shirts

Posted on July 13, 2009
FIFA, world football's governing body, has sent a warning letter to the Brazilian football federation after their players wore T-shirts with Christian slogans during the finals of the Confederations Cup last month. Apparently the T-shirts were under their jerseys, and were displayed after the game in victory photos...

Recent Articles of Interest

Posted on July 13, 2009
From SSRN:Amos N. Guiora, Religious Extremism: A Fundamental Danger, (South Texas Law Review, Vol. 50, No. 743, 2009).From SmartCILP and elsewhere;Casey Luskin, Does Challenging Darwin Create Constitutional Jeopardy? A Comprehensive Survey of Case Law Regarding the teaching of Biological Origins, 32 Hamline Law Review 1 (2009)...

Group Presses 2 California Cities To End Sectarian Invocations

Posted on July 12, 2009
The Freedom from Religion Foundation continues to demand that city councils across the country end the practice of opening their sessions with sectarian Christian prayer. Two California cities-- Tracy and Lodi-- are currently among its targets. The Tracy Press on Friday editorialized: Tracy's prayer policy may be inclusive in its intentions, but it's exclusive in its practice of rotating only those religious leaders (all Christian, like the council) who have come forth to offer invocations...

Nominee To Head NIH Is Strong Advocate For Compatibilibty of Science and Faith

Posted on July 12, 2009
This past Wednesday, the White House announced the nomination of renowned geneticist Dr. Francis S. Collins to head the National Institutes of Health. Collins headed the NIH's Human Genome Project. Yesterday and today, articles in the Wall Street Journal and AlterNet focus on another part of Collins' biography-- his strong advocacy for the position that science (including evolutionary theory) and religious faith are compatible...

Summum's Challenge To Duchesne City Dismissed After Case Was Mooted

Posted on July 12, 2009
Last March, after the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Pleasant Grove City v. Summum that a Utah city need not accept a "Seven Aphorisms" monument for a local park where a 10 Commandments monument already stood, it remanded to the lower courts a more complicated companion case, Summum v...

Catholic Chaplains Complain About California's Proposed Lethal Injection Protocol

Posted on July 12, 2009
On June 30, the California Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections held a hearing on its Proposed Regulations on lethal injections (full text). Executions in California were suspended in 2006 after a federal district court in Morales v. Hickman raised questions about whether California's protocol for executions created too great a risk of extreme pain...

Rights Group Says Arrest By Saudi Religious Police Led To Honor Killing

Posted on July 12, 2009
In Saudi Arabia, the Society for Defending Women?s Rights says that the country's religious police, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, are ultimately responsible for the "honor killing" of two sisters by their brother. Qatar's The Peninsula reported yesterday that Society claimed religious police sparked the anger of the women's brother by arresting the women, ages 19 and 21, for mixing with unrelated males...

British House of Lords Keeps Free Speech Defense To Inciting Hatred Against Gays

Posted on July 12, 2009
In Britain last Thursday, the House of Lords, by a vote of 186-133, deleted from the proposed Coroners and Justice Bill section 61 which would have done away with a statutory free speech defense to the crime of inciting homophobic hatred. The defense is found in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 which outlaws inciting hatred on the ground of sexual orientation, but goes on to provide: In this Part, for the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred...

Recent Prisoner Free Exercise Cases

Posted on July 12, 2009
In Isom v. Lowe, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 56922 (MD PA, July 6, 2009), a Pennsylvania federal district court held that prison officials were justified in taking a Muslim prisoner off the "Common Fare" diet after it was found that he was purchasing and consuming regular items from the Commissary that do not comply with the "Common Fare" diet...

Ireland Passes New Blasphemy Law, Reducing Penalties for Violation

Posted on July 11, 2009
This week, Ireland's parliament, the Oireachtas, passed the Defamation Act 2009 to replace the Defamation Act 1961. Section 36 of the new law imposes a fine of up to 25,000 Euros on anyone who publishes or utters blasphemous matter. In defining the offense, the new law provides: (2) For the purposes of this section, a person publishes or utters blasphemous matter if?(a) he or she publishes or utters matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantialnumber of the adherents of that religion, and(b) he or she intends, by the publication or utterance of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage...

Arizona Governor Signs Students' Religious Liberties Act

Posted on July 11, 2009
On July 10, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed HB 2357, the Students' Religious Liberties Act. It bars public schools from discriminating against parents or students on the basis of religious viewpoints or expression, including religious viewpoints included in class assignments, artwork or coursework...

British Methodists Ban Its Members From Joining British National Party

Posted on July 10, 2009
Ekklesia reported yesterday that Britain's Methodist Church has passed a resolution at its annual conference providing that: "No member of the Church can also be a member of a political party whose constitution, aims or objectives promote racism. This specifically includes, but is not solely limited to, the British National Party...

Canadian FLDS Faces Property, Polygamy Prosecution, Issues

Posted on July 10, 2009
While the U.S. media have given a good deal of attention to the FLDS Church members living in the twin towns of Colorado City, AZ and Hildale, UT, there is also a group of FLDS members in the Canadian town of Bountiful, in British Columbia. This week reports surfaced on two rather interesting developments affecting that community...

ACLU Objects To Jail's Censorship Of Biblical Verses In Correspondence

Posted on July 10, 2009
An ACLU press release yesterday disclosed that the ACLU has written the Superintendent of Virginia's Rappahannock Regional Jail (full text of letter) demanding that it end its rather unusual policy on censorship of incoming letters to inmates. The jail takes out all Biblical passages from incoming mail, as well as any material inserted into a letter by cutting and pasting it from the Internet...

Church Controversy Moves To Florida State Court

Posted on July 10, 2009
In Palm City Florida, a state court lawsuit was filed Wednesday by seven members of the Palm City Christian Church against the church's pastor, Anthony Galbicka. TC Palm reports the suit charges the pastor with breach of fiduciary duty and seeks a ruling "ousting" Pastor Tony and voiding "improper and/or illegal" actions he took...

House Passes Resolution Calling for Motto To Be Added To Visitor Center

Posted on July 10, 2009
The House of Representatives yesterday, by a vote of 410-8, passed H. Con. Res. 131, directing the Architect of the Capitol to engrave the Pledge of Allegiance and the National Motto, "In God We Trust," in the Capitol Visitor Center. Reporting yesterday on the House action, the Fresno Bee said that Sen...

President Obama Meets With Pope Benedict XVI

Posted on July 10, 2009
President Barack Obama and Pope Benedict XVI held private talks for about 40 minutes this afternoon at the Vatican. Reuters and AFP both report on the meeting at which Obama briefed the Pope on the just completed G-8 Summit meetings. They also discussed the sensitive issue of bioethics on which the two have significant disagreements...

Questions Raised Over Canadian Prime Minister At Funeral Mass

Posted on July 09, 2009
Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper has created at least a protocol stir. Last Friday he attended the New Brunswick funeral of former Canadian governor general Romeo Leblanc, a Catholic. St. John's (NB) Telegraphic Journal and CTV Toronto both reported yesterday that a television clip of Harper, a Protestant, receiving communion at the Catholic funeral mass, raises a question of what he did with the communion wafer he received...

House Climate Change Bill Includes Provisions Of Interest

Posted on July 09, 2009
On June 26, the U.S. House of Representatives passed and sent to the Senate the massive American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (HR 2454). Several provisions in the climate bill are of interest to followers of church-state issues:Section 202 includes faith institutions and other non-profits in the group of nonresidential buildings that are eligible for assistance in retrofitting to achieve energy efficiency and improvements in water use...

9th Circuit Vacates Preliminary Injunction Against Pharmacy Board Regulations

Posted on July 09, 2009
In Stormans Inc. v. Selecky, (9th Cir., July 8. 2009), the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a preliminary injunction issued by a federal district court enjoining enforcement of Washington State Pharmacy Board regulations that require pharmacists to fill all prescriptions (including Plan B, the "morning after" contraceptive) even if doing so violates their religious beliefs...

Activities of White House Faith-Based Director Are Outlined

Posted on July 09, 2009
Beliefnet yesterday carried an interesting portrayal of the activities of 26-year old Joshua DuBois, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Every morning he sends a devotional message to President Obama's Blackberry, and daily receives some 750 e-mails from religious leaders, government officials and reporters...

Police Say Theft of Body May Have Been For Religious Ritual

Posted on July 09, 2009
Stamford, Connecticut police are investigating the theft of a young girl's body yesterday from a Connecticut cemetery, saying they suspect some sort of ritualistic religious motivation. They say "a lot of things point to" that conclusion. AP reports that the body was that of a 2-year old girl who had lived much longer than expected in light of a condition that kept her brain from developing fully...

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