Religion Clause

Friday, November 28, 2025

West Virginia Court Says Schools Must Allow Religious Exemptions From Vaccination Requirements

In Guzman v. West Virginia Board of Education, (WV Cir. Ct., Nov. 26, 2025), a West Virginia state trial court, in a 75-page opinion, held that the state's Equal Protection of Religion Law enacted in 2023 requires schools to allow children with religious objections to vaccinations to attend school even though the state's Compulsory Vaccination Law (CVL) provides only for medical exemptions. In 2025, the Governor issued an Executive Order instructing the Health Department to create a religious exemption process. However, schools, pursuant to a policy adopted by the State Board of Education, refuse to recognize religious exemption certificates issued by the Health Department. The court said in part:

Collectively, the Court finds the aggregation of individual behaviors the government permits..., to include without limitation, medical exemptions; students who are permitted to attend school on a daily basis while willfully out of compliance with the CVL; teachers, coaches, and staff who are not subject to the CVL; the learning pod, homeschool, and microschool option for unvaccinated children; and members of the general public who have not received vaccines required under the law but who regularly intermingle on school campuses and mass gatherings throughout the State—pose a greater threat to West Virginia’s claimed goals than would permitting Plaintiffs ’children to attend school with a religious exemption.

These other activities “produc[e] substantial harm” to the protection of the health and safety of the public, which Defendants assert is their compelling interest....

Considering these factors, Defendants have failed to demonstrate that “the protection of the health and safety of the public” will be undermined in any material way by granting religious exemptions, particularly given the bevy of comparable activity that the state permits. Thus, the Court determines that requiring these children to be vaccinated is not “essential”—within the meaning of W. Va. Code § 35-1A-1(a)(1)—“to further a compelling governmental interest,” with that interest here being the protection of the health and safety of the public....

Having considered the full record before it, the Court also concludes that Defendants have failed to satisfy the least restrictive means test....

Defendants cannot satisfy this standard given that forty-five states with a religious exemption process deploy a variety of alternative tactics, such as quarantine in the event of an outbreak, temporary exclusion from school, and other measures to effectively control vaccine preventable diseases while simultaneously respecting religious freedoms....

West Virginia Watch reports on the decision.

Thursday, November 27, 2025

President Issues Thanksgiving Proclamation

President Trump this week issued a Proclamation (full text) declaring today a National Day of Thanksgiving. The Proclamation reads in part:

This year, God has bestowed abundant blessings all across our land and indeed the entire world. As we give thanks to Him, we continue to advance our Nation through strong leadership and commonsense policy. As a result, the American economy is roaring back, we are making progress on lowering the cost of living, a new era of peace is sweeping around the world, our sovereignty is being swiftly restored, and the American spirit is coming back greater and more powerful than ever before.

As we prepare to celebrate 250 glorious years of American independence, this Thanksgiving, we summon the faith, resolve, and unflinching fortitude of the giants of American history who came before us. We vow to build a future that echoes their sacrifice. Above all, we offer our endless gratitude to Almighty God for His love, grace, and infinite blessings....

Wednesday, November 26, 2025

10th Circuit Hears Oral Arguments on Colorado's Regulation of Health Care Sharing Ministries

On Nov. 20, the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries v. Conway, (Audio of full arguments). In the case, a Colorado federal district court refused to issue a preliminary injunction to prevent enforcement of Colorado's reporting requirement for health care sharing plans, most of which are religiously affiliated. (See prior posting.)

Texas AG Sues State Agency for Excluding Sectarian Use of Homelessness Funds

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Monday he has filed suit against the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs challenging its requirements that funds disbursed in its Homelessness Programs and its Bootstrap Loan Program not be used for sectarian or explicitly religious activities such as worship, religious instruction or proselytization. The complaint (full text) in Paxton v. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, (TX Dist. Ct., filed 11/24/2025), alleged in part:

The Bootstrap Loan Program’s and Homelessness Program’s restrictions on sectarian use of program funds ... are unconstitutional because they condition participation in a government benefit on theological choices about worship, instruction, or proselytization, and they impermissibly compel governmental oversight into theological decisions....

To be sure, the Sectarian Exclusions are wholly unnecessary to avoid Establishment Clause concerns.... In other words, the programs would not run afoul of either the U.S. Constitution or Texas Constitution if the rules were silent on the issues upon which they speak or if the rules simply didn’t exist....

... [T]he Sectarian Exclusions are unconstitutional, invalid, and unenforceable under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article 1, Sections 6-7 of the Texas Constitution and, therefore, the Rule interferes with and impairs or threatens to interfere with and impair Texas citizens’ rights or privileges under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article 1, Sections 6-7 of the Texas Constitution....

Tuesday, November 25, 2025

State Department Human Rights Reports Will Have Changed Focus

Yesterday the State Department announced a change in focus for future Country Reports on Human Rights Practices. The Daily Signal and the Washington Post report on new instructions and guidelines provided to U.S. embassies and consulates as they begin to prepare reports for their nations. As reported by The Daily Signal, the following will now be treated as human rights violations by foreign countries:

Sex-change procedures for minors, such as hormone replacement regimens or irreversible transgender surgeries.

Government funded abortions or abortifacient drugs, as well as the total estimated number of annual abortions.

Arrests, administrative penalties, and “official investigations or warnings” for speech or “hate speech.”

The enforcement of policies like affirmative action or diversity, equity, and inclusion that “provide preferential treatment” to workers on the basis of race, sex, or caste.

The facilitation of mass or illegal migration across a country’s territory into other countries.

Attempts to coerce individuals into engaging in euthanasia.

Violations of religious freedom, including antisemitic violence and harassment.

Medical abuses, including forced testing, forced organ harvesting, and eugenic gene-editing practices on human embryos.

According to the Washington Post:

In unveiling the dramatic shift, Trump administration officials offered an unapologetically U.S.-centric and religiously tinged view of human rights. “The United States remains committed to the Declaration of Independence’s recognition that all men are endowed by the Creator with certain unalienable rights,” said a senior State Department official also involved with briefing the news media. The aim is to focus on rights “given to us by God, our creator, not by governments.”

New Test Case on State-Funded Religious Charter Schools Is Being Assembled

As previously reported, earlier this year the U.S. Supreme Court split 4-4 on the question of whether the 1st Amendment allows Oklahoma to authorize and fund a religiously-sponsored virtual charter school. The split was caused by Justice Amy Coney Barrett's recusing herself due to her connection to an early legal advisor to the school. The 4-4 split resulted in the affirmance of an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that the Catholic-sponsored publicly-funded charter school violated Oklahoma statutes, the Oklahoma Constitution and the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. Now, according to JTA, a new test case is being put together. JTA reports in part:

The National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation has notified an Oklahoma state board that it intends to apply for a statewide virtual high school integrating Oklahoma academic standards with daily Jewish religious studies....

... [T]he group’s legal team — led by Becket, a prominent nonprofit religious-liberty law firm — is preparing for the state board to reject the application, setting the stage for a federal lawsuit and, potentially, a precedent-setting ruling at the Supreme Court....

The group will not sue in state court, bypassing the state Supreme Court ruling against St. Isidore, but in federal court, where they believe they will prevail.

By framing Oklahoma’s refusal as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause, Ben Gamla hopes to build on recent Supreme Court rulings holding that states may not exclude religious organizations from generally available public benefits solely because they are religious.

Ministerial Exception Doctrine Does Not Bar Wage-and-Hour Claim

In Lorenzo v. San Francisco Zen Center, (CA App., Nov. 21, 2025), a California state appellate court held that neither the ministerial exception doctrine nor the church autonomy doctrine bars a wage-and-hour claim for past services by an employee who is a "minister" under the ministerial exception doctrine. The court held that the ministerial exception doctrine does not apply because plaintiff's wage claims do not raise an ecclesiastical concern. The court said in part:

... Lorenzo only challenges the Center’s failure to pay her a minimum wage and overtime wages for work that she has already performed as part of the Center’s commercial activities. She does not challenge the Center’s decision to terminate her employment or seek reinstatement. Despite this, the Center asserts that the enforcement of California’s wage-and-hour laws would inevitably result in excessive entanglement with religion in violation of the Religion Clauses solely because Lorenzo is a minister. But the Center does not explain why, and its omission is telling. ...

“[T]he aspect of the church-minister employment relationship that warrants heightened constitutional protection—a church’s freedom to choose its representatives”—is not “present” in every employment claim.... For example, not every aspect of a minister’s compensation is “an internal church decision that affects the faith and mission of the church itself.”... Indeed, “[t]he constitutional rationale for protecting some of a church’s [autonomy to choose its representatives] . . . does not apply . . . where what is at issue is not who the [church] will select to educate its youngest students, but only whether it will provide the people it has chosen with meal breaks, rest breaks, and overtime pay.”...

...[T]he Center has not pointed to and we have not come across anything in the history of the Religion Clauses to suggest that a minister’s compensation, much less the minimum compensation that a minister should receive to subsist, was a concern of the founders....

Monday, November 24, 2025

North Dakota Supreme Court Upholds State's Abortion Ban

In Access Independent Health Services, Inc. v. Wrigley, (ND Sup. Ct., Nov. 21, 2025), the North Dakota Supreme Court reversed a trial court's decision that had invalidated North Dakota's statute that bans most abortions. While 3 of the Supreme Court's 5 justices held that the abortion law is unconstitutionally vague, North Dakota's constitution provides that it takes 4 of the Court's 5 justices to invalidate a law passed by the legislature. The Court's vote thus upholds the constitutionality of the ban. Justice Crothers' opinion for 3 justices said in part:

To the extent an abortion implicates a legal defense justifying or excusing the use of force, N.D.C.C. ch. 12.1-19.1 introduces an apparent conflict of law in North Dakota. A physician who acts with an honest but mistaken belief that an abortion was necessary to protect the life or health of a pregnant patient would be guilty of a crime under the objective reasonableness standard set out by N.D.C.C. ch. 12.1-19.1. Simultaneously, under the subjective reasonableness standard that applies to defenses under N.D.C.C. ch. 12.1-05, the same physician would be innocent because his belief that the abortion was necessary, although mistaken, was honest. On their face, these conflicting standards make it unclear whether a physician who performs an abortion in good faith will nonetheless suffer criminal penalties....

We agree with the district court that, in the context of medical care the Plaintiff physicians perform with the intent of protecting the lives and health of their patients, N.D.C.C. ch. 12.1-19.1, does not give fair warning and allows for discriminatory and arbitrary enforcement....

Justice Tufte writing for two justices, said in part:

I depart from the majority opinion in two significant respects. First, the majority opinion extends to the natural rights guaranteed by Article I, Section 1, the more stringent vagueness standard we have previously reserved for First Amendment rights that receive the additional protection of the chilling effect doctrine. Second, the majority opinion extends our precedent to allow a pre-enforcement facial challenge in which the challengers present only hypothetical future conduct as the basis for the testifying experts’ disagreement about the legal application of the statute. The parties’ presentation of witnesses having expertise in medicine or history who disagree about lawyer-crafted hypotheticals is not a sufficient basis for a court to declare a statute unconstitutionally vague....

The rights guaranteed by Article I, Section 1, are those natural rights as they were known to the people of North Dakota at the time the constitution was adopted. These natural rights were fixed at that time, and our judicial duty is to ensure that they “shall not be infringed.” These rights are protected from legislative overreach because they are excluded from the state’s broad legislative power.

... [T]he natural rights that every North Dakota citizen has “by nature” include an individual right to seek medical care without risk of criminal prosecution, including but not limited to abortion, when reasonably necessary to preserve the individual’s life.... Section 1 does not imply a right to abortion as such, and evolving public opinion on abortion cannot create one—only a constitutional amendment can do that.... Section 1 limits state power to regulate abortion where it is a necessary means to the constitutionally protected end of "defending life."

AP reports on the decision. [Thanks to Scott Mange and Thomas Rutledge for the lead.]

Sunday, November 23, 2025

Church's Challenge to Fire Code Applicability Triggers Strict Scrutiny

In Pool v. Dad's Place of Bryan, Ohio, (OH App., Nov. 21, 2025), an Ohio state appellate court remanded to the trial court a church's suit seeking an injunction against subjecting it to Ohio's fire code requirements for residential buildings. The city contends that the church's overnight ministry constitutes use of the building for "residential" as well as "assembly" purposes because the building is used in part for "sleeping purposes." Categorizing the building as "residential" would require the church to install a sprinkler system whose cost is beyond the church's financial ability.

The court said in part:

... [N]ot only has appellant presented undisputed evidence that it cannot afford to open a second location to provide sleeping accommodations, appellant maintains that its religious beliefs require it to welcome the stranger to live among the church, not to operate an offsite homeless shelter. Moreover, appellant cannot simply relocate to somewhere else in the surrounding area with the appropriate use occupancy. Because appellant’s ministry involves gatherings for religious worship, during which individuals are permitted to fall asleep, appellee maintains that appellant’s use occupancy is mixed.... Outside of a fire official exercising discretion in favor of appellant, appellant is left with only one option to comply with the fire code: cease permitting individuals to sleep in its premises, which would violate appellant’s religious beliefs....

The lack of objective criteria in the fire code to categorize appellant’s use as residential combined with appellee’s shifting interpretations throughout the matter’s pendency demonstrates that the fire code provisions at issue are not generally applicable....

... [A]ppellant maintains that it has no intention of creating a homeless shelter, but instead its intention is to provide an overnight ministry in which individuals can pray, engage in fellowship, and listen to scripture, and it would violate its sincerely held religious beliefs to wake individuals who fall asleep during its ministry.... [A]ppellee had to consider the reasons for appellant’s conduct—including its religious reasons—when exercising his discretion to determine that appellant impermissibly changed its use occupancy, and therefore the fire code provisions at issue are not generally applicable.... Accordingly, appellee’s attempted enforcement of the fire code is subject to strict scrutiny under federal constitutional law, and the trial court erred in applying a rational basis review....

Here, appellant opposed the preliminary injunction under both the federal Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause and the Ohio Constitution’s Conscience Clause.... The trial court did not apply a strict scrutiny test as required by Ohio constitutional law, and therefore the trial court neglected to address appellant’s rights under the Ohio Conscience Clause.

Friday, November 21, 2025

Priest Brings Defamation Action Against Podcasters Who Questioned His Credentials as an Exorcist

Suit was filed this week in a Michigan federal district court in an unusual battle between a Catholic priest and rival podcasters. The complaint (full text) in Martins v. Romero, (ED MI, filed 11/17/2025), alleges in part:

1. This is a defamation and false light action stemming from false and misleading statements published on the Jesus 911 podcast on the November 20th, November 27th, and December 4th, 2024 episodes.

2. The Defendants intentionally or recklessly invited public critique and scrutiny over Plaintiff’s title as an exorcist by repeatedly asserting that the Plaintiff is not an exorcist. The Defendants’ statements have perpetuated a narrative that undermines the Plaintiff’s credibility....

43. The Exorcist Files is a podcast co-created and co-hosted by Ryan Bethea and Fr. Martins....

44. The Exorcist Files podcast aired its first episode on January 25, 2023, and currently streams on large podcast platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music.

45. Due to the popularity of the podcast, Fr. Martins published a book, also titled The Exorcist Files, where he provides a comprehensive view of the 2,000-year-old Catholic ministry of exorcism, examining spiritual dangers lurking in modern society, to help readers understand how to remain free from their influence and control. The Exorcist Files book was published on November 19, 2024, and its release was widely anticipated.

46. Upon information and belief, the Defendants had identified Fr. Martins as a competitor in the popular niche of exorcism themed television, radio, podcast, and books. They timed the release of their podcasts to destroy Fr. Martin’s reputation and to diminish the sales of Fr. Martins’ book....

[Thanks to Eugene Volokh via Religionlaw for the lead]

CAIR Sues Texas Governor

As previously reported, earlier this week Texas governor Greg Abbott issued a Proclamation designating CAIR as a Foreign Terrorist and Transnational Criminal Organizations under Texas law. CAIR has now responded by filing suit against the governor and the Texas attorney general in a Texas federal district court. The complaint (full text) in Council on American-Islamic Relations Texas Dallas Fort Worth v. Abbott, (WD TX, filed 11/20/2025), alleges in part:

57. Wrongfully and unilaterally designating Plaintiffs as “foreign terrorist organizations,” and declaring them unable to purchase land in the state of Texas harms Plaintiffs’ advocacy work, fundraising initiatives, and reputation as organizations.

58. Given that state law is preempted by federal law, Plaintiffs are entitled to injunctive relief prohibiting Defendant Paxton from enforcing the Proclamation against them....

65. Governor Abbott’s Proclamation deprives Plaintiffs of their procedural due process rights by designating them as “Foreign Terrorist Organizations” under Texas Penal Code 71.01, “Transnational Criminal Organizations” under Texas Property Code § 5.251, and proscribed entities via designation by the governor under Texas Property Code § 5.254 without providing Plaintiffs the right to respond to and challenge the designations....

77. Governor Abbott’s Proclamation identifies no criminal conduct by Plaintiffs. Instead, it relies almost entirely on political speech and advocacy – particularly remarks by CAIR’s Executive Director encouraging civic engagement, political participation, and representation by American Muslims.

78. These statements are quintessential political and religious expressions. Yet Governor Abbott invoked them to claim Plaintiffs seek to “advance Sharia law in America,” a characterization rooted in stereotype and hostility rather than evidence.

79. A state official may not wield governmental power to punish an organization or silence its advocacy because of disagreement with its speech, its religious identity, or the communities it represents....

96. ... [T]he Proclamation substantially infringes Plaintiffs’ First Amendment right to expressive association by deterring individuals and organizations from joining, supporting, partnering with, or participating in Plaintiffs’ lawful advocacy....

CAIR issued a press release announcing the filing of the lawsuit.

Catholic Clergy Sue for Access to ICE Detention Facility

A religious advocacy organization, its director, 3 priests, and a sister filed suit this week against immigration officials alleging that their free exercise rights were infringed by ICE agents who barred them from entering an Illinois ICE detention center to pray and give holy Communion to detainees. The complaint (full text) in Coalition for Spiritual and Public Leadership v. Noem, (ND IL, filed 11/19/2025), alleges in part:

60. The intimidation of the religious persons, Catholic, Protestant, and of other faith traditions, has denied them their religious right to practice their faith. Until the intimidation began, Catholic clergy had been “allowed” to pray and administer Holy Communion to detainees. The refusal of ICE officials to allow clergy and laypersons to bring the Most Blessed Sacrament to fellow Catholics housed in the facility is an arbitrary decision by ICE. Heretofore, ICE has allowed religious services, including the distribution of Holy Communion. A non-specific reference to safety and security is not sufficient to deny the rights of Catholic clergy and laypersons, or persons of any other denomination or religion, to practice their faith, especially as others have been allowed to do so at the ICE facility in Broadview since it became an immigration-related facility in 2006....

66. Defendants’ policies and practices have unreasonably burdened the Plaintiffs’ free exercise of religion in violation of the First Amendment and the broad protections under the RFRA, without any showing that those policies and practices advance a compelling government interest, or that if such a compelling interest even exists, it would be the least restrictive means available for doing so....

81. Defendants’ policies and practices have burdened the Detainee’s free exercise of religion under the First Amendment and in violation of the RLUIPA....

The Coalition issued a press release announcing the filing of the lawsuit.