Greece Approves Cremation For Non-Orthodox

BBC News reported yesterday that, after a 10-year battle, the Parliament of Greece has finally enacted limited legislation permitting bodies to be cremated. The bill has been opposed by the Greek Orthodox Church, which considers cremation to be a violation of the human body. In deference to this, the legislation, as enacted, only applies to individuals whose religion permits cremation. Thus only the small number of people in Greece who are not Orthodox Christians will be able to take advantage of the new option.

Paper Chronicles Neighborhood Battle Centered On Orthodox Jews

Today's Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles carries a long report on the Hancock Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, and its contentious battle over elections to the Midwilshire Neighborhood Council. The tension between Orthodox Jews and other residents of the area is an object lesson in the problem of creating political divisions along religious lines, and in the passions that are raised by religious land use disputes. The long and convoluted history of the area's intergroup tensions are difficult to summarize briefly. However, the article ends with cautious optimism that the competing factions may be beginning to cooperate.

Alito Thank-You To Dobson Raises Criticism

Just a month into his tenure on the U.S. Spreme Court, Justice Samuel Alito yesterday found himself embroiled in a controversy over a thank-you note he recently wrote.Alito responded to a letter of congratulations from Christian conservative Dr. James C. Dobson, with a note described by law professor Stephen Gillers as "inartful" and "clumsy". (New York Times article.) The full text of the letter is carried by the Colorado Springs Gazette. It reads in part:

This is just a short note to express my heartfelt thanks to you and the entire staff of Focus on the Family for your help and support during the past few challenging months.... As I said when I spoke at my formal investiture at the White House last week, the prayers of so many people from around the country were a palpable and powerful force. As long as I serve on the Supreme Court I will keep in mind the trust that has been placed in me. I hope that we’ll have the opportunity to meet personally at some point in the future.

Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State strongly criticized Alito's note, saying, "Justice Alito should follow the commands of the Constitution, not the orders of Dobson and the Religious Right." Reviewing the tempest on the blog Politcal Cortex, James Clarkson comments "what is missed in all the commentary so far is that Alito expressed a desire to meet with Dobson. Even if it is true that he sent out a number of thank you letters and that it was routine, does he also want to meet with these supporters?"

Democratic Catholic House Members Issue Statement of Principles

Religious News Service reports that 55 of the 72 Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday issued a "Statement of Principles" (full text). The statement emphasizes the broad social agenda of the Representatives and the primacy of conscience in their views on social issues:

We are committed to making real the basic principles that are at the heart of Catholic social teaching: helping the poor and disadvantaged, protecting the most vulnerable among us, and ensuring that all Americans of every faith are given meaningful opportunities to share in the blessings of this great country. That commitment is fulfilled in different ways by legislators but includes: reducing the rising rates of poverty; increasing access to education for all; pressing for increased access to health care; and taking seriously the decision to go to war. Each of these issues challenges our obligations as Catholics to community and helping those in need....

In all these issues, we seek the Church's guidance and assistance but believe also in the primacy of conscience. In recognizing the Church's role in providing moral leadership, we acknowledge and accept the tension that comes with being in disagreement with the Church in some areas. Yet we believe we can speak to the fundamental issues that unite us as Catholics and lend our voices to changing the political debate -- a debate that often fails to reflect and encompass the depth and complexity of these issues.

Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro said Catholic Democrats did not want to see Catholic faith defined solely by a "one-issue, very narrow right-wing agenda." Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington, who is heading a bishops' task force on how to respond to dissenting politicians, said he had not yet seen the statement, but said he was willing to continue informal discussions with Catholics in both parties. [Thanks to Mirror of Justice for the lead.]

California School Will Not Excuse Absence For Ash Wednesday Service

In Bakersfield, California, parent Nona Darling is complaining to school authorities about policies that make it difficult for children to miss school for religious holidays. Darling wanted to take her children out of school at noon on Ash Wednesday to attend services. However, the school said that if she did, the children would be given an "unexcused" absence. The Bakersfield Californian yesterday said it is not clear to what extent the school's policy, that gives excused absences for doctor's appointments, sickness, and funerals, but only in limited situations for religious observances, reflects the state's education code.

No Federal Court Jurisdiction In Priest Abuse Case

Earlier this month, a Colorado federal district court issued a potentially important jurisdictional decision in another of the long-running clergy sexual abuse cases. It refused to permit the Archdiocese of Denver to remove to federal court a claim originally filed against it in state court. In Doe v. Archdiocese of Denver, (D Colo., Feb. 9, 2006), the court held that there is no federal court "federal question" jurisdiction over a claim that the Archdiocese of Denver was negligent in employing and supervising two offending priests. The court held that the case does not pose First Amendment issues. The court said "the defendants' duty, if any, arises not out of their special status as religious authorities but rather out of their decision to join the host of employers in all fields who must exercise reasonable care in their hiring and supervisory decisions."

More Prisoner Free Exercise Cases

The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the grant of summary judgment to Georgia Department of Correction employees in Boxer X v. Donald, (11th Cir., Feb. 28 2006). The court held that providing prisoners with a generic religious service for a given religion and not a separate service for each denomination or sect is reasonably related to the legitimate penological interest in not overburdening state resources. The court rejected both plaintiff's free exercise claim and his claim that other religions received preferential treatment.

In Shaw v. Frank, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7231 (ED Wis., Feb. 15, 2006), a Wisconsin federal trial court held that allegations by a prisoner sufficiently stated free exercise and RLUIPA claims to permit his case to proceed. Terrence J. Shaw alleged that Wisconsin prison authorities terminated him from participation in sex offender treatment because of his religious beliefs, belittled and forced him to engage in exercises contrary to his religious beliefs during sex offender treatment, and refused to allow him to use his religious name.

In Shabazz v. Martin, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7207 (ED Mich., Feb. 9, 2006), a federal district judge accepted earlier findings by a magistrate judge that a prisoner's free exercise claims are not moot and that he adequately asserted equal protection claims. Plaintiff alleged that the use of prayer rugs and pendants by Nation of Islam religious members was prohibited, while members of other Islamic faiths were permitted to possess these items. He also alleged that he was denied transfer to another prison consistent with his security classification because of his membership in the Nation of Islam. The magistrate's recommendations are reported at 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 40657 (ED Mich., Oct. 11, 2005).

7th Circuit Denies Stay Of Order Against Sectarian Prayer In Indiana House

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to stay the judgment of the district court that enjoined the Speaker of the Indiana House of Representatives from permitting further sectarian prayer at the beginning of House sessions. The majority in the 7th Circuit concluded: "In assessing the Speaker's chance of success on the merits of his appeal and in balancing the slight and temporary injury he faces absent a stay, we must conclude that the Speaker has not met his burden of establishing that a stay ought to be granted." The full text of the 18-page majority opinion and 3-page dissent in Hinrichs v. Bosma (7th Cir., March 1, 2006) is available online. Yesterday's Chicago Tribune reports on reactions to the refusal.

US Muslim Group Says Closing Charities Interferes With Religious Duties

A Muslim coalition group yesterday sent a letter to Treasury Secretary John Snow complaining that actions against Muslim charities have interfered with the religious obligation of American Muslims to help the needy. In the wake of federal action last week to freeze assets of the Toledo, Ohio-based charity KindHearts, the Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections has requested a meeting with Secretary Snow. Federal authorities claimed that KindHearts was supporting Hamas terrorism in the Middle East. Reporting on these developments, the Toledo Blade says that Islamic law requires Muslims to donate to charity and places restrictions on how donated funds can be distributed. Secular American charities usually do not meet the requirements of Islamic law.

Private Town Planned Around Christian Teachings

Domino's Pizza founder Thomas S. Monaghan is setting the stage to test the limits of old Supreme Court precedent, like Marsh v. Alabama, that held privately owned towns may nevertheless be subject to restrictions of the First Amendment. To be build around Ave Maria University, east of Naples, Florida, the new town will be developed through a partnership with the Barron Collier Co., an agricultural and real estate firm, according to the Associated Press. It will be set on 5,000 acres with a European-inspired town center, and will encircle a massive church and a 65-foot tall crucifix. The most controversial part of Monaghan's plans, however, is his notion that various kinds of goods and services that are inconsistent with strict Catholic principles will not be available in the town. He envisions that local stores will not sell pornographic magazines, pharmacies will not carry condoms or birth control pills, and cable television will carry no X-rated channels.

UPDATE: In an interview on Friday with the Associated Press, Thomas Monaghan qualified many of his earlier statements. He said that mandatory restrictions will be limited to Ave Maria University. The town will be open to anyone, but it will be suggested to businesses that they not sell adult magazines or contraceptives. The town will not restrict cable television programming, and, according to the town's developer, it will not discriminate on the basis of religion, race, ethnicity or sexual orientation.

TRO Denied In Challenge To Navy's Chaplain Selection System

In Adair v. England, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7367 (D DC, Feb. 28, 2006), the DC federal district court refused to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the Navy from discharging plaintiff Michael Belt and other naval chaplains from active duty, finding that they were unlikely to succeed on the merits and had not show irreparable injury. A group of evangelical chaplains who are plaintiffs in the long-running litigation charged that the Navy maintains an unconstitutional religious quota system that favors hiring, promoting and retaining chaplains from liturgical Christian denominations at a rate greater than the liturgical Christians' representation among all Navy personnel. They also challenge the Navy's chaplain-promotion system, including placing more than one Catholic chaplain on promotion boards, the use of chaplains to rate other chaplains, the application of "faith group identifier" codes, and the general domination of the boards by liturgical Protestant and Catholic chaplains.

Church-State Tensions In Spain

Today's Washington Post carries an article about the growing tensions in Spain between the government of Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and the Catholic Church. Zapatero blocked mandatory religious classes in public schools, and announced that his government would relax abortion laws, ease restrictions on divorce, legalize gay marriage and permit gay couples to adopt children. In response, the archbishop of Madrid called the Spanish capital "a hotbed of sin."

Government spokesman Fernando Moraleda said, "This is a government that is deeply secular and reform-oriented," and it must adapt Spain to its position as a modern member of the European Union. Church supporters say Zapatero's government is anti-clerical and out of touch with Spanish society, which is more than 80 percent Catholic. Government moves aim at changing the constitutional balance between church and state that was created under Spain's 1978 Constitution, adopted after the death of the longtime dictator Gen. Francisco Franco. Clashes between the Spanish left and the church helped propel Franco to power during the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War.

Anti-Evolution Proposals In the West-- One Dies While Another Is Born

In the western part of the United States, one skirmish against evolution has died while another is being born. In Utah on Monday, according to the Salt Lake Tribune, the House of Representatives rejected by a vote of 46-28 a bill that would have required teachers to tell students that evolution is not a fact and that the state does not endorse evolution. SB 96 had been passed by the state Senate after some conservative senators criticized what they called the "religion of atheism." The House, led by Rep. Stephen Urquhart, redrafted the bill to try to eliminate any religious references. By the time it was finally voted on, the bill merely provided "The State Board of Education shall establish curriculum requirements relating to scientific instruction." Then the House defeated even that as a way of stopping the Senate from reviving the issue.

Meanwhile, the Las Vegas Sun reports that in Nevada on Tuesday, masonry contractor Steve Brown filed an initiative petition with the secretary of state's office. His proposal would require that students, by the end of the 10th grade, be informed that "although most scientists agree that Darwin's theory of evolution is well supported, a small minority of scientists do not agree." Several "areas of disagreement" would have to be covered in class, including the view by some scientists that "it is mathematically impossible for the first cell to have evolved by itself." Students also would have to be told some scientists argue "that nowhere in the fossil record is there an indisputable skeleton of a transitional species, or a 'missing link'", and "be informed that the origin of sex, or sex drive, is one of biology's mysteries" and that some scientists contend that sexual reproduction "would require an unbelievable series of chance events".

Brown will need to collect 83,184 signatures by June 20 to get his plan on the November ballot, and will have to get voter approval both this year and in the 2008 elections for the amendment to be finally adopted.

School Can Remove Religious Postings From Teacher's Classroom

In Lee v. York County School Division, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7114 (ED Va., Feb. 23, 2006), a Virginia federal district court rejected free speech and equal protection claims by William Lee, a Spanish teacher at York County's Tabb High School whose principal removed religiously oriented material that Lee had posted on his classroom bulletin board. The decision focused on precedent holding that the content of curricular speech by a teacher is subject to control by the school. The court also found that the school had not made its bulletin boards limited public forums; thus the school could regulate their content. (See prior posting.)

The Associated Press report on the case indicates that Lee's postings included news articles about President Bush's religious faith and former Attorney General John Ashcroft's prayer meetings with his staffers; a flier publicizing the National Day of Prayer; and a depiction of George Washington praying at Valley Forge.

UPDATE: Steve Taylor, attorney for teacher William Lee, says he will appeal the decision to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Board Committee Meeting On Textbook Depiction of Hindus Is Contentious

The battle between competing groups in the Hindu community over how their religion should be portrayed in school textbooks in California culminated in an emotional 4-hour hearing in Sacramento yesterday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. (See prior posting.) The hearing ended with a few members of the overflow audience shouting at a subcommittee of the state Board of Education after it rejected changes they wanted in six new middle-school social studies textbooks . The Vedic Foundation and Hindu Education Foundation are seeking to remove or soften references to the untouchable caste and the subordinate status of women in India. Knight Ridder News in reporting on the meeting says that the special commission did accept a few proposed changes, like changing language that referred to a "caste system" to "class system. The committee will report its conclusions to the full Board on March 8.

Free Exercise Claim To Use of Hemp Rejected

In Kiczenski v. Ashcroft, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7007 (ED Cal., Feb. 24, 2006), a California federal district court rejected plaintiff's claim that his religious beliefs were being infringed by the federal government's refusal to permit him to cultivate, possess and use hemp. The court rejected plaintiff's claims under RFRA and the First Amendment because it found that the beliefs that impel him to grow and use hemp are secular, economic, social, and philosophical, not religious. The court said: "Although plaintiff does link 'tending his garden' with feeling close to God, he does not specifically link or require growing hemp to commune with God." In a footnote, the court added that "even if a 'commune with God through nature' philosophy could be considered a religion, plaintiff's religion would not be substantially burdened by not permitting him to grow hemp [because]... it is growing anything, not specifically hemp, which spiritually fulfills plaintiff. "

More Questions Raised On Boston's Sale Of Land To Mosque

In Boston, there has been ongoing controversy about a sale of land by the Boston Redevelopment Authority to the Islamic Society of Boston for the building of a mosque. ISB paid the BRA $175,000 cash and various in-kind public benefits for a parcel of land they publicly agreed was worth $401,000. A suit is pending challenging the constitutionality of the sale. Boston's Weekly Dig now says that it has documents indicating that the transferred land was really worth $2 million, thereby creating new questions about the transaction.

Jewish Group Endorses Principles Supporting Pluralistic Democracy

On Monday evening, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) at its 2006 Plenum adopted a resolution on "Protecting Pluralistic Democracy In America". In part it reads:

The pairing of the Free Exercise Clause alongside the Establishment Clause secures for Americans freedom of religion and freedom from governmental imposition of religion. These freedoms have enabled America to thrive as perhaps the most religiously diverse society in history. There are those, however, who seek not just a place for religion in the public square, but to co-opt the institutions of the government itself to advance their own religious agenda, while denying freedoms to others.

It is the right of individuals, including political and religious leaders to express their beliefs in public settings, but it is not their right to imbue governmental actions, meetings, buildings and other segments of the 'public square' with sectarian religious messages. It is the rights of individuals to adopt religious or scientific explanations for the origins of life, but religious theories should never be taught as science or an alternative to science in public schools. It is the right of members of the military to express religious viewpoints to fellow soldiers, but not to proselytize within the chain of command, or implicitly or explicitly pressure those of differing religious beliefs. It is the right of individuals to seek personal freedoms that may run contrary to religious convictions, but the laws of this nation and the pluralistic spirit which they foster demand no single religious belief or view be championed or codified above other sincerely held beliefs.

The resolution went on to deal with a number of specific issues in more detail It said that science and medicine-- including funding, research, availability of medicines and services, and appointments to governmental advisory boards-- need to remain independent from religious, political and ideological interferences.

The JCPA is the umbrella group for 13 national Jewish groups and local community relations councils from around the country.

How Various Religions Fare In Court Challenges

At The Volokh Conspiracy, Prof. Greg Sisk (who is a regular at Mirror of Justice) is blogging all this week about his empirical research on how various religious denominations fare in free exercise challenges in the courts. Here is some of what he said in his first posting yesterday (which also contains links to the full studies):

First, those religious groupings that both today and historically have been regarded as outsiders or minorities, such as Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, and various others (including Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Scientists), did not succeed or fail in making religious liberty claims at a rate (controlling for all other variables) that was significantly different than for other religious classifications. In sum, with the potential exception of Muslim claimants in certain claim subcategories, religious minorities did not experience disproportionately unfavorable treatments in the federal courts of the 1980s and 1990s.

Second, two categories of religious affiliation by claimants emerged as consistently and significantly associated with a negative outcome—Catholic (at the 99% probability level) and Baptist (at the 95% probability level).

The question remains why those whose religious views are within the mainstream of American society would be significantly less likely to succeed in obtaining a court-ordered accommodation of religious practices. I’ll examine several possible answers to that question, beginning tomorrow.

U.S. To Oppose Current Version of UN Human Rights Council

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, announced on Monday that the U.S. would vote against the latest version of the resolution to create a new U.N. Human Rights Council unless negotiations are reopened to address serious deficiencies, especially the chance that countries abusing human rights can become Council members. (See prior related posting.) The U.S. wants to require a two-thirds vote of the General Assembly for a member to be elected to the new Council. The AP today reported on developments. The U.S. position puts it at odds with key human rights groups and many other U.N. members who believe that, while the current proposal does not go as far as they would like, it is still a significant improvement over the current discredited UN Human Rights Commission. They argue that reopening negotiations is likely to weaken, not strengthen, the new Council.