Objective coverage of church-state and religious liberty developments, with extensive links to primary sources.
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Human Rights Activists Charge Egypt Plans To Monitor Sermons In Mosques Through Cameras
Costa Rica's Constitutional Court Rejects Bishops Power To Select Religion Teachers
ACLU Say College Prof Teaches Religion and Anti-LGBT Views As Fact
Monday, February 08, 2010
White House Faith Based Council Posts Votes On Two Controversial Church-State Issues [UPDATED]
The first issue is whether faith-based social service providers should be allowed to provide services in rooms that contain religious symbols, artwork or messages. Two members voted to ban any religious symbols. Seven members voted to allow symbols when there is no space in the organization's offices without them and when removing or covering them would be infeasible, so long as objecting clients also have a choice of a different provider to which they do not object. Sixteen members voted not to require removal or covering of symbols, but to encourage providers to be sensitive and to attempt to accommodate those who object, and have alternative providers available if that is not sufficient.
The second issue is whether the government should require houses of worship to form separate corporations to receive direct federal social service funds. Thirteen voted yes; 12 voted no. (See prior related posting.)
Indian Court Strikes Down Quotas for Backward Classes of Muslims
Meanwhile according to today's Business Standard, the government of West Bengal announced a 10% set-aside of government jobs for Muslims there who are economically, socially and educationally backward.
Recent Articles of Interest
- Carissima Mathen, What Religious Freedom Jurisprudence Reveals About Equality, (Journal of Law and Equality, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2009).
- Dov Fox, Taking Sides on Genetic Modification, (American Journal of Bioethics - Neuroscience, Forthcoming).
- Alexander Tallchief Skibine, Culture Talk or Culture War in Federal Indian Law?, (Tulsa Law Review, Forthcoming).
- Susan J. Stabile, An Effort to Articulate a Catholic Realist Approach to Abortion, (U of St. Thomas Legal Studies Research Paper No. 10-08, 2010).
- Mary Jean Dolan, Government Identity Messages and Religion: The Endorsement Test after Summum, (February 5, 2010).
- Robert K. Vischer, When is a Catholic Doing Legal Theory Doing "Catholic Legal Theory?", (Seton Hall Law Review, Forthcoming).
- Elizabeth Rose Schiltz, The Paradox of the Global and the Local in the Financial Crisis of 2008: Applying the Lessons of Caritas in Veritate to the Regulation of Consumer Credit in the United States and the European Union, (Journal of Law and Religion, Vol. 26, 2010).
- Andrew M.M. Koppelman, No Respect: Brian Leiter on Religion, (Northwestern Public Law Research Paper No. 10-07, Jan. 5, 2010).
From SmartCILP:
- Bruce Ledewitz, Could Government Speech Endorsing a Higher Law Resolve the Establishment Clause Crisis?, 41 St. Mary's Law Journal 41-117 (2009).
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Activist Charges Conflicts In Some Illinois Capital Funding For Religious Groups
Recent Prisoner Free Exercise Cases
In Green v. Tudor, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7414 (WD MI, Jan. 29, 2010), a Michigan federal district court accepted a magistrate's recommendations (2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124246, Oct. 21, 2009) and dismissed various claims by an inmate over the lack of hot Ramadan meals and lack of notice of substitutions of items in Ramadan meals.
Rupe v. Cate, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 7817 (ED CA, Feb. 1, 2010), was a challenge to alleged discrimination and repression by prison officials of prisoner's attempts to practice their Druid and other Pagan religions. While dismissing a number of plaintiff's claims, the court allowed him to proceed on his claim under the free exercise clause, his claim for retaliation and his equal protection claim.
In Cobb v. Mendoza-Powers, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8089 (CD CA, Jan. 25. 2010), a California federal district court adopted the findings of a magistrate (2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 124379 , Oct. 20, 2009) and dismissed without prejudice an inmate's claim that his free exercise rights were violated when he was not excused for religious reasons from complying with prison grooming standards. The court held that this claim is not cognizable in a habeas corpus action.
In Valentine v. Poff, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 8253 (WD VA, Feb. 1, 2010), a Virginia federal district court dismissed a frivolous an inmate's challenge to the type of food served to him in his religious diet.
In Blake v. Howland, 2009 Mass. Super. LEXIS 363 (MA Super. Ct., Dec. 2, 2009), a Massachusetts trial court rejected state and federal free exercise claims, claims under RLUIPA and other challenges by a Native American man who is civilly committed as a sexually dangerous person. Plaintiff complained he is denied access to smudging and pipe ceremonies, a purification lodge, various other items needed for Native American worship ceremonies and is also not furnished a Native American volunteer to work with members of his religious group.
In Jamal v. Smith, 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 5029 (CD IL, Jan. 22, 2010), an Illinois federal district court permitted a Muslim inmate to proceed with his claim that a pat down search of him was conducted by a female officer in violation of his religious objections, even though male officers were readily available. First Amendment Center reports on the case.
A release from the Rutherford Institute reports that it has filed suit in Virginia federal district court challenging a Virginia Department of Corrections directive that prohibits inmates from receiving CDs containing spoken words. The suit was filed on behalf of an inmate wishing to obtain a CD containing a Christian sermon. (Full text of complaint in Mabe v. Commonwealth of Virginia, (ED VA, filed Feb. 3, 2010).
Lawsuit Challenges Library's Meeting Room Policy
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Anglican Factions In Zimbabwe Struggle Over Control
Lenient Sentence Imposed on Muslim Man By Britain's Cherie Blair Brings Complaints
Street Preachers Challenge "Loud Noise" and Trespass Bans
Friday, February 05, 2010
Trial of Geert Wilders Proceeds With Pared Down Witness List
North Korea Says It Will Release U.S. Christian Activist
Slovakian Court Upholds Religion Law's Registration Requirement
Indonesia's Constitutional Court Hearing Challenge To Blasphemy Law
Groups Urge President To Beef Up Church-State Safeguards In Faith-Based Funding
On the one year anniversary of your Executive Order establishing the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, the undersigned religious, education, civil rights, labor, and health organizations write to urge that you take additional actions to prevent government-funded religious discrimination and protect social service beneficiaries from unwelcome proselytizing.The letter urged the White House to prohibit religious organizations from discriminating in hiring on the basis of religion within federally-funded social welfare projects. It also urged that the President amend existing Executive orders to ensure that:
Here are the releases on the letter issued by the ADL, Americans United and the Baptist Joint Committee, all of which were signatories.Program beneficiaries are not subject to unwanted proselytizing or religious activities.
Program providers give proper notice to beneficiaries of their religious liberty rights and access to alternative, secular providers.
Houses of worship and other religious institutions, in which religion is so integrally infused that it cannot be separated out, be required to create separate corporations for the purpose of providing secular, government-funded social services.....
Secular alternatives to social services provided by houses of worship and other religious institutions are readily available to beneficiaries.....
Uniform guidance and training materials be developed for all federal agencies to ensure that government-funded providers understand constitutionally-required religious liberty safeguards..... Furthermore, providers should be required to certify their adherence to the safeguards – and government agencies should engage in oversight to ensure compliance.
Deference Given To Hierarchical Determination in Church Property Dispute
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Secretary of State, President Speak At National Prayer Breakfast
President Barack Obama also spoke at length at the National Prayer Breakfast. (Full text of remarks.) Spotlighting the American people's response to the recent earthquake in Haiti, he said:All religions have their version of the Golden Rule and direct us to love our neighbor and welcome the stranger and visit the prisoner.... Yet across the world, we see organized religion standing in the way of faith, perverting love, undermining that message.
Sometimes it's easier to see that far away than here at home. But religion, cloaked in naked power lust, is used to justify horrific violence, attacks on homes, markets, schools, volleyball games, churches, mosques, synagogues, temples. From Iraq to Pakistan and Afghanistan to Nigeria and the Middle East, religion is used a club to deny the human rights of girls and women, from the Gulf to Africa to Asia, and to discriminate, even advocating the execution of gays and lesbians. Religion is used to enshrine in law intolerance of free expression and peaceful protest. Iran is now detaining and executing people under a new crime – waging war against God. It seems to be a rather dramatic identity crisis.
So in the Obama Administration, we are working to bridge religious divides. We’re taking on violations of human rights perpetrated in the name of religion. And we invite members of Congress and clergy and active citizens like all of you here to join us.... We are committed, not only to reaching out and speaking up about the perversion of religion, and in particularly the use of it to promote and justify terrorism, but also seeking to find common ground. We are working with Muslim nations to come up with an appropriate way of demonstrating criticism of religious intolerance without stepping over into the area of freedom of religion or non-religion and expression.
This is what we do, as Americans, in times of trouble. We unite, recognizing that such crises call on all of us to act, recognizing that there but for the grace of God go I, recognizing that life's most sacred responsibility -- one affirmed, as Hillary said, by all of the world's great religions -- is to sacrifice something of ourselves for a person in need.As urged by a number of people, Obama also spoke out against the harsh anti-gay legislation recently proposed in Uganda, reportedly at the urging of the same group that sponsored the Prayer Breakfast. (See prior posting.) The President said:
Sadly, though, that spirit is too often absent when tackling the long-term, but no less profound issues facing our country and the world. Too often, that spirit is missing without the spectacular tragedy ... that can shake us out of complacency. We become numb to the day-to-day crises, the slow-moving tragedies of children without food and men without shelter and families without health care. We become absorbed with our abstract arguments, our ideological disputes, our contests for power. And in this Tower of Babel, we lose the sound of God's voice.
We may disagree about the best way to reform our health care system, but surely we can agree that no one ought to go broke when they get sick in the richest nation on Earth. We can take different approaches to ending inequality, but surely we can agree on the need to lift our children out of ignorance; to lift our neighbors from poverty. We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are -- whether it's here in the United States or, as Hillary mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.