Objective coverage of church-state and religious liberty developments, with extensive links to primary sources.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Opinion In Hollywood, FL. Synagogue Case Finding Zoning Regs Vague
The court ordered that Hollywood Community Synagogue be granted the special exception that it formerly had, conditioned only on certain specific conditions regarding soundproofing and trash. It ordered that the city promptly enact a new Special Exception ordinance for places of worship with narrow, objective and definite standards to guide city officials. Finally it ordered that the issue of damages be placed before a jury.
This Week's Prisoner Free Exercise Decisions
In Buchanan v. Burbury, 2006 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 48244 (ND Ohio, July 17, 2006), an Ohio federal district court granted a preliminary injunction in a RLUIPA case brought by an inmate who was an adherent of the Yahweh's New Covenant Assembly, a Sacred Name Sabbatarian faith group. The court ordered that plaintiff be provided with a kosher diet, he be excused from work on the Sabbath and his religion’s seven holy days, and that the group be given the opportunity to worship under the same requirements as other groups, which might require that it be removed from the prison’s Protestant catchment and placed into its own separate catchment.
Survey Of Religious Freedom In Africa
Friday, July 21, 2006
Hate Crimes Still In The News
Vodou Practitioner Gets Light Sentence
New Scholarly Articles Posted Online
Kathleen A. Brady, Religious Group Autonomy: Further Reflections About What Is At Stake (July 1, 2006).
From SSRN:
Richard W. Garnett IV, The Freedom of the Church , forthcoming in Journal of Catholic Social Thought, Vol. 4 (2007) .
Joel A. Nichols, Dual Lenses: Using Theology and Human Rights to Evaluate China's 2005 Regulations on Religion, forthcoming in Pepperdine Law Review, Vol 34 (2006). [Thanks to Legal Theory blog.]
Apparent New Mexican President May Bring Changes In Church-State Policy
Some Kosher Food Laws Problematic For Conservative Rabbis
Preliminary Injunction Denied In City Incentives For Baptist Convention
The city agreed to discount the price of its arena by $ 195,000, provide up to $100,000 for transportation costs, and provide $5,000 to feed hungry people in Baltimore at a pre-convention event involving representatives of the national convention. The court previously ordered that participants in the Feed the Hungry Event could not engage in religious solicitation or distribute religious materials as part of that city-funded event. With that safeguard in place, the court held that the incentives granted by Baltimore did not violate the Establishment Clause.
Interview With China's Religious Affairs Head
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Afghanistan To Re-Establish "Vice and Virtue" Department
Property Dispute Between New York Episcopal Parish and Diocese
Cert. Filed In California Sea Scouts Case
Article On Court-Stripping Legislation
Atheists Demand Apology For Army General's Remarks
Attorney Protests IRS Church Audit Procedures
Saudis Granted Waiver On Sanctions-- Progress On Religious Freedom Cited
These include policies designed to halt the dissemination of intolerant literature and extremist ideology, both within Saudi Arabia and around the world, to protect the right to private worship, and to curb harassment of religious practice. For example, the Saudi Government is conducting a comprehensive revision of textbooks and educational curricula to weed out disparaging remarks toward religious groups, a process that will be completed in one to two years. The Saudi Government is also retraining teachers and the religious police to ensure that the rights of Muslims and non-Muslims are protected and to promote tolerance and combat extremism. The Saudi Government has also created a Human Rights Commission to address the full range of human rights complaints.
First Amendment Does Not Require Accommodation Of Job Applicant's Beliefs
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
New Jersey Chief Justice Nixes Fugitive Safe Surrender Program
In Cleveland, fugitives were greeted by volunteers who handed out water and pretzels, while sheriff's deputies ran their names through computerized databases. Then they met with a judge and a public defender in the church's library, and generally released on bond. The New Jersey Supreme Court, however, is concerned about court procedures taking place in a religious facility. It is also concerned that it would appear that the court was working on behalf of the prosecutor and was not neutral. The court offered to have a judge available at the courthouse to process the fugitives, but U.S. Marshall James Plousis said that is inconsistent with the underlying concept of the program.
GAO Report Reviews Faith-Based Initiative
Titled Faith-Based and Community Initiative: Improvements in Monitoring Grantees and Measuring Performance Could Enhance Accountability, the full report has just been posted on the GAO's website. Here is part of the Report Abstract:
Since 2001, federal agencies have awarded over $500 million through new grant programs to provide training and technical assistance to faith-based and community organizations and to increase the participation of these organizations in providing federally funded social services.... Most of the agencies provided grantees with an explicit statement on the safeguard prohibiting the use of direct federal funds for inherently religious activities. If these activities are offered, they must be offered separately in time or location from services provided with direct federal funds and must be voluntary for the beneficiary. However, we found that Justice's regulation and guidance related to these activities is unclear for its correctional programs. We also found that only four programs provided a statement on the rights of program beneficiaries and only three provided information on permissible hiring by FBOs.
While officials in all 26 FBOs [Faith Based Organizations] that we visited said that they understood that federal funds cannot be used for inherently religious activities, a few FBOs described activities that appeared to violate this safeguard. Four of the 13 FBOs that provided voluntary religious activities did not separate in time or location some religious activities from federally funded program services....
[I]t is unclear whether the data reported on grants awarded to FBOs provide policymakers with a sound basis to assess the progress of agencies in meeting the initiative's long-term goal of greater participation of faith-based and community organizations. Moreover, little information is available to assess progress toward another long-term goal of improving participant outcomes because outcome-based evaluations for many pilot programs have not begun.