Fired Gay Catholic School Vice-Principal Sues

Last Friday, a lawsuit was filed in state court in Seattle, Washington by a former Catholic high school vice-principal Mark Zmuda who was fired after he married his same-sex partner last December.  According to The Guardian, the suit alleges violation of Washington's law against discrimination, breach of implied contract, wrongful termination, violation of the consumer protection act, and tortious interference.  The Guardian reports:

Zmuda does not dispute that he signed an employment contract that required him to uphold Catholic teachings. However, his complaint claims that the school misrepresented its employment environment as being one of inclusion and anti-discrimination both on its website and in its employee handbook.

The school's president, Sister Mary Tracey knew earlier on that Zmuda is gay. He complied with her request not to bring his partner to school events. After the marriage, Sister Mary told Zmuda that if he would divorce his husband, the school would pay the costs of a commitment ceremony in place of a wedding, and would allow him to keep his job. The school is seeking dismissal of the suit on the basis of its 1st Amendment right to make its own decisions on matters of faith and doctrine.

2016 Republican Platform on School Choice and Title IX

Yesterday the Republican Party at its national convention adopted its 2016 Platform (full text).  This is the fifth in a series of posts that focus on Platform provisions dealing with moral values and religious liberty. Note that the excerpts continue after the jump. Here are portions of the sections titled Choice in Education, and Title IX:

We support options for learning, including home-schooling, career and technical education, private or parochial schools, magnet schools, charter schools, online learning, and early-college high schools. We especially support the innovative financing mechanisms that make options available to all children: education savings accounts (ESAs), vouchers, and tuition tax credits. Empowering families to access the learning environments that will best help their children to realize their full potential is one of the greatest civil rights challenges of our time. A young person’s ability to succeed in school must be based on his or her God-given talent and motivation, not an address, ZIP code, or economic status. We propose that the bulk of federal money through Title I for low-income children and through IDEA for children with special needs should follow the child to whatever school the family thinks will work best for them.....

Dolphins Cheerleader Claims Religious Discrimination In Limits On Her Social Media Posts

According to USA Today, former Miami Dolphins cheerleader Kristan Ann Ware this week filed a complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations against the Dolphins and the National Football League alleging religious and gender discrimination.  She says that in her annual work review, she was told not to discuss on social media her religious decision to abstain from sex before marriage.  She had posted a photo of her baptism online.  She contends that the players are not held to the same standards regarding discussion of religion on social media.

Recent Articles and Books of Interest

 From SSRN:

• Sephen A. Rosenbaum, Invisibility, Inclusivity & Fraternity: [Book Review Essay] 'Was Yosef on the Spectrum? Understanding Joseph Through Torah, Midrash and Classical Jewish Sources' , by Samuel J. Levine, Urim Publications (2019), (36 Touro Law Review 215 (2020)).
• Aabid Majeed Sheikh & Sayed Hanan Yusofi, Religion in International Relations Theory, (Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education 16, February 2019).
• John H. Shannon & Richard J. Hunter, Jr, The Civil Rights Act of 1964: Beyond Race to Employment Discrimination Based on Sex: The 'Three Letter Word' That Has Continued to Vex Society and The United States Supreme Court, (Journal of Social and Political Sciences, Vol.3 No.3 (2020)).
• Jared Ham, Getting Away with Marginalization: Rejecting a Formalistic Standing Analysis and Remedying LGBTQ+ Discrimination Through Congressional Legislation, (Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol. 28, No. 3, 2019).
• Tal Mimran, In A Broken Dream: Lessons from The Rise and Demise of the Self-Declared Caliphate of the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, (Journal of Transnational Law & Policy, Vol. 29, 2019-2020).
• Aabid Majeed Sheikh, Maulana Maududi and Sayid Qutub on Jihaad and Islamic State, (International Journal of Multidisciplinary Educational Research, Vol 7, No (12(2) (2018).
• Rosemary Teele Langford, Conflicts and Coherence in the Charities Sphere: Would a Conflict By Any Other Name Proscribe the Same?, ((2020) 14 Journal of Equity).
• Peter Molk & D. Daniel Sokol, Nonprofit Governance in an Age of Compliance,(August 7, 2020).

Recent & Forthcoming books:

• Aaron Griffith, God’s Law and Order: The Politics of Punishment in Evangelical America, (Harvard Univ. Press, Nov. 2020).
• William N. Eskridge Jr. & Christopher R. Riano, Marriage Equality: From Outlaws to In-Laws , (Yale Univ. Press, Aug. 2020).