Satanic Temple Sues to Deliver Invocation at Chicago City Council

The Satanic Temple filed suit last week in an Illinois federal district court challenging the city's exclusion of its clergy from delivering an invocation before Chicago City Council.  The complaint (full text) in The Satanic Temple, Inc. v. City of Chicago, (ND IL, filed 5/3/2023) alleges in part:

2. The City of Chicago has a longstanding practice of inviting clergy to open each meeting of its City Council with a prayer. 

3. Plaintiffs, The Satanic Temple Inc. (“TST”), and Adam Vavrick, an ordained minister of the Satanic Temple and a leader of TST’s Illinois congregation, seek to take part in this time-honored tradition by delivering an invocation before a City Council meeting. For more than three years, the City has rebuffed Plaintiffs’ efforts to provide an invocation without providing any clear explanation of why. 

4. The City’s practices with regard to invocations before City Council violate the First Amendment in two ways:

first, the City violates the First Amendment’s establishment clause by excluding disfavored minority faiths from the opportunity to provide an invocation; and 

second, the City grants the City Clerk unconstrained discretion to decide who can and cannot deliver an invocation because it lacks any standards for selection of clergy to give invocations and has not established a uniform process for members of the clergy to apply to give an invocation.

Reason reports on the lawsuit.

7th Circuit Keeps RLUIPA Suit Against Chicago Alive

In World Outreach Conference v. City of Chicago, (7th Cir., June 1, 2015), the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals breathed new life into a RLUIPA case that has been in litigation for 9 years. The court reversed the district court's grant of summary judgment to the city of Chicago as to claims against the city for damages because of delays in granting licenses to World Outreach so it could operate a former YMCA building for its religious purposes. World Outreach argued it lost some $591,000 that it could have made by housing Hurricane Katrina evacuees in the building. The court's opinion by Judge Posner included comments about the power of aldermen in Chicago politics.  Judge Cudahy concurred with one of the shortest and most cryptic opinions ever:

Unfortunately; and I think the opinion must be stamped with a large “MAYBE.”

(See prior related posting.) RLUIPA Defense blog reports on the decision.

Chicago Archdiocese Releases Files on 30 Priests In Settlement of Abuse Lawsuits

AP reports that yesterday the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago released 6000 pages of documents relating to 30 priests who have had substantiated sex abuse allegations lodged against them. The step comes as part of the settlement of suits by victims.  Lawyers for the victims say they plan to make the released files public next week.  Files on another 35 priests who have had substantiated abuse complaints against them have not been released because they were not the subject of the lawsuits that were settled.  The Archdiocese plans to develop a process for release of these additional documents. The Archdiocese yesterday posted a statement about the document release on its website.

UPDATE: The law firm of Jeff Anderson & Associates has now posted the released documents here.