Head Of Civil Rights Division of Justice Department Resigns

Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim, head of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, has resigned effective the end of this month. (DOJ release, 8/23). Reporting on the resignation, Thursday's New York Times emphasizes that this adds to the vacancies in top posts at the Department. Blog from the Capitol points out that it was under Kim's leadership that the Division began the First Freedom Project that placed a new emphasis on religious freedom cases.

Welsh Legislator Wants Multi-Faith Assemblies In Schools

In Wales, Liberal Democrat National Assembly member Peter Black has called for a change in the law to provide for multi-faith assemblies in public schools to replace Christian worship that now takes place. Black says that this would promote tolerance and understanding in a diverse society. Welsh law currently requires schools to have daily collective worship that is "broadly Christian", while taking account of other religions in Great Britain. IC Wales today reports that Saleem Kidwai, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, supported Black's suggestion, saying that he did not want religion removed from schools. Black's suggestion came in response to an inquiry from a humanist organization. A number of Christian spokesmen support the current rules.

Reversionary Clause Enforced Through Finding That Church De Facto Dissolved

In Central Coast Baptist Association v. First Baptist Church of Los Lomas, (Ct. App. Cal., Aug. 23, 2007), a California Court of Appeals resolved a church property dispute, enforcing a reversionary clause in First Baptist Church's constitution. the constitution provided that in either of two situations, the assets of the church would go to Central Coast Baptist Association. The court held that it lacked jurisdiction to determine whether the church had "ceased to function as a Southern Baptist Church", since this would require "the court to decide issues involving religious doctrine, polity, and practice, an undertaking forbidden by the First Amendment." However, "the court did have jurisdiction to inquire into the alternate basis stated in the reversionary clause, namely whether there had been a 'dissolution or
winding up of the organization.'" A determination that the church had de facto dissolved does not involve religious issues.

Church-State Landmarks In New Book and Movie

Two rather different historical events in the history of U.S. church-state relations are in the news because of a new book and a new movie. New York University law professor Stephen Solomon's new book, Ellery's Protest, (Univ. Mich. Press), examines the 1963 case, Abington v. Schempp, which struck down mandatory Bible reading and recitation of the Lord's Prayer in public school classrooms. Yesterday's Boston Globe reports on Ellery Schempp's life today, and recounts that the landmark litigation began after Schempp, as a high school student, protested by opening a copy of the Quran during Bible reading time.

Meanwhile, yesterday's Christian Science Monitor reports on the new movie, September Dawn, which is about to be released. The movie offers a fictionalized account of the 1857 "Utah War". That largely forgotten incident took place as the U.S. Army was marching toward Utah to confront Mormon leaders. A group of Mormons, aided by Native Americans, massacred 120 unarmed people in a California-bound wagon train. The paper reports that for the first time, the Mormon church is engaged in intensive research on the history of the event, and has featured some of the findings in the September edition of the church's magazine, Ensign.

Ukrainian Churches Named After Politicians

In Ukraine, according to yesterday's Interfax, churches are being named after politicians. A Lvov church is named after Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko, while in Dnepropetrovsk one is named for political leader leader Yulia Timoshenko. Also, a portrait of Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich hangs in a church in Donetsk.

Florida Ends Kosher Food Option In Its Prisons

The Florida Department of Corrections has ended its Jewish Dietary Accommodation Program in state prisons. The AP reported yesterday that the program provided kosher food for Jewish inmates and was also used to accommodate Muslim prisoners requesting a halal diet. The state offered a variety of reasons for the change, including cost and the difficulty of screening inmates to determine whose religious beliefs are sincere. It also said it was not fair to satisfy demands of only a small group of prisoners when its prison population encompasses over 100 faiths. Instead of kosher food, prisoners will be able to choose a vegetarian or vegan option, and the prison system has totally stopped serving pork products.

Christian Leafleter Challenges Georgia City's Parade Ordinance

The Alliance Defense Fund filed suit yesterday in a Georgia federal court challenging the constitutionality of the parade permit ordinance in Cumming, Georgia, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The suit was filed after a state court avoided passing on the constitutionality of the ordinance earlier this month in a case involving the arrest of Frederic Baumann, who was distributing Christian religious literature on a sidewalk outside the city's fairgrounds. Baumann's conviction was reverse after a court held that the permit ordinance did not apply to his activities. (See prior posting.) The new suit, filed on behalf of Baumann, seeks a declaratory judgment and an injunction to protect Baumann's activities and to find that the ordinance violates the free speech, free exercise, equal protection and due process clauses of the U.S. constitution. The suit also asks for damages. (Full text of complaint).

DC Police Get Training To Understand Sikh Community

Yesterday's Panthic Weekly reports on a cooperative program between the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF) and the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department (MDP). The program is training all 3,000 MDC police officers to understand the Sikh religion and is making suggestions on how to interact with the Sikh community in non-emergency, non-crisis situations. SALDEF's training program has previously been used in other agencies and police departments as well.

Native American Religious Rights Pose Complexity In Massachusetts Case

The complexity in protecting religious rights of Native Americans is illustrated by a case heard in Famouth, Massachusetts yesterday, and reported on in today's Cape Cod Times. In January, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council "shunned" four tribe members who had filed a lawsuit against the Council charging financial mismanagement. This meant that the four were banned from the tribe's annual Pow Wow in July. However, they attended anyway, claiming that the Pow Wow is a religious activity and the Tribal Council was interfering with their religious exercise. Tribal leaders called Mashpee police who issued trespass complaints against the four. Those complaints were dismissed yesterday by a Falmouth District Court Magistrate after the defendants, while still asserting their right to attend the Pow Wow, agreed to obey an order not to trespass on tribal lands for the next three months. Meanwhile, the financial mismanagement lawsuit filed by the four dissidents has been dismissed because in February the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe received federal recognition, and a Superior Court judge held that this deprived state courts of jurisdiction over the lawsuit.

Ukraine Officials Accused of Failing to Prevent Anti-Semitic Attacks

In the Ukraine, chief-rabbi Azriel Chaikin has released a letter charging government and law enforcement officials with failing to prevent a series of anti-Semitic assaults in the country. Chabad.org News yesterday quoted Chaikin as saying that authorities "either don't have the desire or are incapable of preserving security".

Parent Loses Challenge To In-School Anti-Drug Speaker

Marion, Illinois parent Robert Marsh has failed to convince a federal court jury that his daughter's school district endorsed religion or fostered excessive entanglement when it permitted Texas evangelist Ronnie Hill to speak at school assemblies in November 2003. Yesterday's Houston Chronicle reports on the decision handed down last week. Originally Marsh sought an injunction against the evangelist's appearance. A judge permitted the secular in-school presentations to go on, but ordered the evangelist not to use the school talk to promote his later appearance at a local church. However, it turns out that tickets to Hill's evangelical church rally, which included a pizza party, were handed out at the school on the day Hill spoke. Then a judge dismissed Marsh's lawsuit as moot because the school assemblies had already taken place. Later, however, a second judge reinstated Marsh's claim for damages. After the jury last week found against Marsh, the court ordered him to pay the school district's court costs. (See prior related posting.)

Anonymous Airline Passengers Dropped From Imams' Civil Rights Suit

Now that a new federal law grants immunity from suit to individuals who, in good faith, report on suspicious activities of fellow airline passengers, a group of imams who are plaintiffs in a Minnesota case yesterday dismissed the "John Doe" passenger defendants from their lawsuit. (Dismissal Notice.) The Beckett Fund yesterday issued a release setting out its involvement in demanding that the plaintiffs drop the passengers as defendants in the civil rights suit alleging that six imams were wrongfully removed from a U.S. Airways flight last November.

Louisiana School Board Adopts New Prayer Policy for Meetings

Now that plaintiffs challenging the prayers that open school board meetings in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana have lost their case on standing grounds, the school board on Tuesday adopted a new policy, according to The Advocate. The Board will create a database of congregations with an established presence in the local community and will send out a letter once a year to them inviting their clergy to lead the prayers on a first-come, first-served basis. No individual may lead prayers more than three times each year, and the School Board will not review the prayers in advance. [Thanks to Melissa Rogers for the lead.]

Suit Claiming Dams Impede Tribal Religious Ceremonies Proceeds

A Northern District of California federal judge on Friday rejected a motion by PacifiCorp to dismiss the lawsuit filed against it by a number of plaintiffs including Yurok and Karuk Tribal members. The lawsuit seeks damages for toxic water conditions caused by PacifiCorp's dams on the Klamath River. The court also refused to delay the case while the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission completes long-running dam re-licensing proceedings. Plaintiffs allege, in part, that toxic blue-green algae thriving in reservoirs above the dams have seriously interfered with river-based tribal religious ceremonies. Yesterday's American Chronicle reports on the court's holding that the grant of a federal permit for the dams does not preclude the bringing of a nuisance claim against PacifiCorp.

Suit Challenging Removal of Prison Religious Books Refiled As Class Action

Two New York prisoners have refiled a lawsuit challenging the federal Bureau of Prisons policy that severely limits the number of books in prison chapel libraries, according to yesterday's International Herald Tribune. An earlier suit they filed was withdrawn after the court ruled that they had not exhausted internal prison channels to complain. The new suit seeks class action certification so that plaintiffs can sue on behalf of prisoners around the country. The Bureau of Prisons implemented the challenged policy after it concluded that prison chapel libraries were not being adequately supervised, fearing that radical religious books might fall into the hands of violent inmates. The rules now limit prison libraries to between 100 and 150 titles for each religion. Many books previously in the libraries were removed. The lawsuit claims that this had led to hundreds of religious books and media being removed from prisons since February, often without review to learn if they are objectionable. (See prior related postings, 1, 2 .)

Quebec Closes Down Mennonite School-- Families Move Away

In Canada, Quebec's Education Ministry is threatening to take the province's only Mennonite community to court if it does not close down its faith-based school. The school that enrolls eleven children is operating without a permit, employs uncertified teachers and does not follow required curriculum standards. In response, according to Today's Family News, several Mennonite families with young children are planning to move to another province. Roxton Falls Mayor Jean-Marie Laplante has asked the Education Minister to allow the Mennonite school to continue to operate.

Germans Concerned Over Proposed New Mosque In Cologne

In Cologne, Germany, unexpectedly strong opposition has arisen to plans for the building of a new $20 million mosque on the site of a current one that is housed in a refurbished factory. The design for the new mosque-- a combination of classical and modern architecture-- came from a design competition held by the Turkish-Islamic Union. Today's Detroit Free Press (reprinting an article from last week's Chicago Tribune) says that German politicians and religious leaders have both expressed concerns. Criticism spread after Ralph Giordano, a respected German-Jewish writer, said the mosque demonstrated the creeping Islamization of Europe. Joerg Uckermann, deputy mayor of the Ehrenfeld district, said: "The mosque is not a symbol of integration, it's a symbol of isolation, the symbol of an isolated enclave of Oriental culture." And Germany's Cardinal Joachim Meisner said that the plans for the mosque give him an "uneasy feeling." The comments reflect growing concern in Germany over its failure to fully integrate the country's 2.7 million Turkish immigrants, at the same time that Turkey is pressing for admission to the European Union.

9th Circuit Voids Settlement In Synagogue's RLUIPA Case

In League of Residential Neighborhood Advocates v. City of Los Angeles, (9th Cir., Aug. 21, 2007), the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court's approval of a settlement agreement in a RLUIPA case that would have permitted a synagogue to operate in an area zoned for residential use. The appellate court agreed with neighbors of Congregation Etz Chaim that the settlement process cannot be used to evade state law requirements for notice and a hearing for the affected community before a conditional use permit is granted. Merely a potential violation of federal law is not reason enough. "Before approving any settlement agreement that authorizes a state or municipal entity to disregard its own statutes in the name of federal law, a district court must find that there has been or will be an actual violation of that federal law." Today's Los Angeles Times reports on the decision.

Florida Hebrew Language Charter School Has New Problems With Curriculum

A controversial Hebrew language Charter School in Hollywood, Florida has encountered new problems. (See prior posting.) Today's South Florida Sun Sentinel reports that yesterday thee Broward County School Board told the Ben Gamla school to stop teaching Hebrew until its curriculum was approved as being totally secular. After having two previous programs rejected for being based, in part, on traditional Jewish texts, the program presented to the Board yesterday contained only a "curriculum map" that outlined the skills that students would develop at each level. However the Board objected to the content of some of the websites the "map" listed as teacher resources. So now the Board has hired Nathan Katz, a professor in Florida International University's religious studies department, to review the curriculum. The Board will not meet again for three weeks.

UPDATE: An August 23 report by the New York Times reports that school founder Peter Deutsch wants to start similar charter schools in Los Angeles, Miami and New York and hopes to eventually open 100 Hebrew-English charter schools around the country. He is already seeking four more charters in Florida.

Michigan Church Sues Over Permission To Run Counseling Program

Tomorrow a Michigan federal district court will hear arguments in a dispute between a Lennox Township (MI) church and township officials over the church’s residential counseling program. According to today’s Macomb Daily, Grace Community Church (GCC) has taken over 54 acres of land containing a former Catholic church and monastery that housed 25 people. The Township forced GCC to stop operating its Discipleship Training Center in the former monastery building, claiming that GCC was offering substance abuse counseling in addition to the religious counseling that is allowed under its land use permit. GCC’s pastor, Bill Pacey, says that is not so, even though he is a licensed substance abuse counselor. GCC’s lawsuit claims that the Township is violating RLUIPA by preventing it from operating its program.