He knew men who took 16-year-old girls as plural wives. The marriages were sanctioned by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, so Barlow didn't report them.
He looked up license plates for church security so they could track dissenters and their families. He obstructed the FBI when it came to town.
On March 19, a mob attacked Farkhunda after an amulet peddler accused her of burning a Quran after she challenged him over selling his wares to women desperate to have children. Chilling mobile phone videos recorded the horror of the last moments of Farkhunda's life, as she was punched, kicked, beaten with wooden planks, thrown off a roof, run over by a car and ultimately set afire on the banks of Kabul River.The two full days of hearings in Farkhunda's trial were broadcast live across the country.
Defendants represented, through their advertising and other express representations, that the drug rehabilitation services they offered were “secular” and not associated with any religion when, in fact, their treatment program required the Plaintiff and Class Members to study Scientology and engage in Scientology religious rituals as “treatment.”A similar lawsuit was filed in Michigan in January against a Narconon Center there. (See prior posting.)
The Hutaree Militia formed in 2006, preparing for the apocalyptic end of time with commando exercises and live ammunition training....
For years the Hutaree Christian Warriors enjoyed playing war games in the woods of Northwest Indiana and Southern Michigan. But in 2010, federal authorities said the Hutaree Games had given way to a violent plot aimed at killing police and overthrowing the government.
Nine militia members were arrested, but the charges ended up being dismissed, and some members sued federal authorities for violating their rights.Among the claims unsuccessfully asserted by the Hutaree was that the free exercise rights of one of their members were infringed by the seizure of copies of the Bible during the search. The 6th Circuit held that it is questionable whether a cause of action for damages for violation of the Free Exercise Clause exists, but even if it does, plaintiff had not plead violation of a clearly-established right sufficient to overcome defendants' qualified immunity, nor had plaintiff plead that the seizure placed a substantial burden on his practice of religion.
Under the Board’s practice, the government is delivering prayers that were exclusively prepared and controlled by the government, constituting a much greater and more intimate government involvement in the prayer practice than that at issue in Town of Greece or Marsh....
Additionally, because of the prayer practice’s exclusive nature, that is, being delivered solely by the Commissioners, the prayer practice cannot be said to be nondiscriminatory.... [T]he present case presents a closed-universe of prayer-givers, that being the Commissioners themselves, who favored religious beliefs believed to be common to the majority of voters in Rowan County. While an all-comers policy is not necessarily required, a nondiscriminatory one is. When all faiths but those of the five elected Commissioners are excluded, the policy inherently discriminates and disfavors religious minorities. That some day a believer in a minority faith could be elected does not remedy that until then, minority faiths have no means of being recognized.The court also held that the county's prayer practice is unconstitutionally coercive in violation of the Establishment Clause. Charlotte Observer reports on the decision.
Because neither side disputes that a blanket denial of kosher meals imposes a substantial burden on prisoners' religious exercise for those prisoners that have a sincere religious belief requiring them to eat kosher, the burden is on Defendants to demonstrate that denying such prisoners kosher meals (a) is in furtherance of a compelling state interest and (b) is the least restrictive means of achieving that interest. Throughout this litigation, Defendants have asserted that they have a compelling state interest in cost containment and that not providing a kosher diet is the least restrictive means of achieving cost containment. Defendants have not met their burden....
As the United States contends, it is hard to understand how Defendants can have a compelling state interest in not spending money that they are already voluntarily spending on the exact thing they claim to have an interest in not providing.The court also enjoined two other aspects of the religious diet program: the zero tolerance policy on infractions and the rule requiring removal from the program of an inmate who has missed 10% of his meals. However the court refused to enjoin the potential use as one part of its testing of an inmate's religious sincerity a question asking the inmate to identify the religious rules that require him to eat a religious diet. The Justice Department issued a press release announcing the decision. Orlando Sentinel yesterday reported on the decision.
A few of the judges seemed to key in on the idea the city argued all along that the city needs this property for revenue, but the judges seemed alarmed that some of the uses the city has allowed in the ORD don’t generate a lot of revenue. The city cannot have this zoning district that claims only to allow revenue-generating uses when they’ve allowed uses that don’t generate revenue to the extent Tree of Life would, such as day care centers, charitable hospitals and nonprofit offices.
[T]he requirement of supervision is not limited to only certain forms of supervision, such as direct or actual, as the Superior Court held. By its plain terms it encompasses all forms of supervision of a child’s welfare.... Further, as the Commonwealth correctly argues, supervision is routinely accomplished through subordinates, and is no less supervisory if it does not involve personal encounters with the children. Like Appellee, school principals and managers of day care centers supervise the welfare of the children under their care through their management of others. Depending upon the facts, they could be criminally liable for endangering the welfare of the children under their supervision if they knowingly place sexually abusive employees in such proximity to them as to allow for the abuse of these youth.Chief Justice Saylor filed a dissenting opinion.
The 2015 Annual Report recognizes that non-state actors, such as transnational or local organizations, are some of the most egregious violators of religious freedom. For example, in the Central African Republic and areas of Iraq and Syria, the governments are either non-existent or incapable of addressing violations committed by non-state actors. USCIRF has concluded that the CPC classification should be expanded to allow for the designation of countries such as these, where particularly severe violations of religious freedom are occurring but a government does not exist or does not control its territory. Accordingly, USCIRF’s CPC recommendations reflect that approach.The Report recommends that the State Department redesignate 9 countries as CPC: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. It also recommends adding 8 other countries to the list: Central African Republic, Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, and Viet Nam.
A horrified world has watched the results of what some have aptly called violence masquerading as religious devotion.The Report also recommends changes within the State Department to give more authority to the Ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom as well as a number of other funding enhancements, programmatic changes and changes in the processing of asylum seekers. Vice-Chair James Zogby issued a dissenting statement saying:
I voted against some of the recommendations in this chapter because I cannot support USCIRF calling on Congress to micro-manage the way the State Department and the White House National Security Council organize their staff and set their priorities.Again this year, the Report includes lists of those imprisoned in several countries as activists, conscientious objectors or those sentenced for blasphemy.