In a majority ruling, judges Uzi Vogelman and Ofer Grosskopf wrote that the ban harms the fundamental rights for the autonomy of the individual and freedom of religion.
They wrote that it also harms the dignity of patients and their right to self-determination and the exercise of their own choices and preferences.
Her injury is the direct contact she must endure with a display that she alleges violates the Establishment Clause in the course of exercising her rights as a citizen of Jackson County.Moving to the merits of the claim, the court said in part:
Here ... the Nativity scene is not on its own. It is accompanied by two other arguably secular symbols of Christmas: Santa Claus and a group of Christmas carolers....
Nevertheless, two facts persuade the Court that this Nativity scene would give a reasonable observer the impression that the government is endorsing a religion. The first of those facts is the geography of the display.... Santa and the carolers are placed to the far side of the display, away from the more centralized Nativity display, which straddles the sidewalk subdividing the lawn.... The crèche is the vast majority of the display ... making it appear much larger than the solitary Santa figure.... The carolers have been placed in the back of the display, lessening the attention they would draw from an observer....
The second fact that convinces the Court that the Nativity scene would give the impression of a religious endorsement is the scene’s history. For many years, it was only a Nativity scene, with no secular elements at all.... But in 2018, in response to a letter from the Freedom from Religion Foundation questioning the display’s constitutionality, the President of the County Commissioners ... physically moved Santa Claus and his sleigh and reindeer and the carolers to a place nearer the crèche.... The addition of less prominent secular symbols at the fringes of the display is not enough to counteract the impression a reasonable observer would have gotten from seeing the Nativity display placed on the lawn of the Courthouse for nearly 20 years. The Court has no doubt that a sufficient balancing between secular and nonsecular elements could bring this display into harmony with the First Amendment despite its history, but that balancing has not occurred here. Thus, the display fails the endorsement test.
Appellant may have had a First Amendment right to spray paint on his own property the offensive words and symbols used here. Once he combined that action with a criminal act, however, in this case defacing property of another, his criminal activity was not protected by the First Amendment.
Rebbe Menchem Mendel Schneerson determined the power and authority granted to the owners of these properties, not this Court. His intentions and only his intentions were made clear by granting full authority to the owners, through Boards of Trustees, not the congregants or the Gabboim, over the religious corporation’s real property and personal property. This Court has the legal obligation to enforce the bylaws, religious corporation law and subsequent amendments to their contents. Just as the congregants had no legal rights to challenge the decision of the Board of Trustees to demolish a church, the congregation and the Gabboim have no legal rights to continue in possession after the Board of Trustees granted authorization tocommence these legal proceedings to recover possession of the subject premises by proper board action.Anash.org reports on the decision.
When responding to the COVID-19 pandemic ... Defendants “may implement emergency measures that curtail constitutional rights so long as the measures have at least some ‘real or substantial relation’ to the public health crisis and are not ‘beyond all question, a plain, palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law.’...
Plaintiffs argue that the Orders are underinclusive of secular activities that may also contribute to the spread of COVID-19 because they allow grocery stores, fast food restaurants, and marijuana dispensaries to remain open.... But these are all essential services: without access to the food and medicines sold at these locations, more citizens would become ill or die.... If the state applies the same rules to in-person religious gatherings ... people will get sick and die from attending religious gatherings just as they are dying from working in grocery stores....
Because the Orders are facially neutral and generally applicable, they are subject to rational basis review..... And they easily survive rational basis....
USCIRF recommends 14 countries to the State Department for designation as “countries of particular concern” (CPCs) because their governments engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing, egregious violations.” These include nine that the State Department designated as CPCs in December 2019—Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan—as well as five others—India, Nigeria, Russia, Syria, and Vietnam.
... [USCIRF] also recommends 15 countries for placement on the State Department’s Special Watch List (SWL) for severe violations. These include four that the State Department placed on that list in December 2019—Cuba, Nicaragua, Sudan, and Uzbekistan—as well as 11 others—Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Central African Republic (CAR), Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, and Turkey....
The 2020 Annual Report further recommends to the State Department six non-state actors for designation as “entities of particular concern” (EPCs) for systematic, ongoing, egregious violations. These consist of five groups that the State Department designated in December 2019—al-Shabaab in Somalia, Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Houthis in Yemen, Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) in Afghanistan, and the Taliban in Afghanistan—plus one other—Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria.The 104-page report also makes various policy recommendations to the Administration and to Congress.
... [E]ven in times of emergency, when reasonable and temporary restrictions are placed on rights, the First Amendment and federal statutory law prohibit discrimination against religious institutions and religious believers. The legal restrictions on state and local authority are not limited to discrimination against religious institutions and religious believers. For example, the Constitution also forbids, in certain circumstances, discrimination against disfavored speech and undue interference with the national economy. If a state or local ordinance crosses the line from an appropriate exercise of authority to stop the spread of COVID19 into an overbearing infringement of constitutional and statutory protections, the Department of Justice may have an obligation to address that overreach in federal court.Liberty Counsel issued a press release announcing the Memorandum.
That the Court issue a Temporary Restraining Order restraining ... Governor Northam [and] all Commonwealth officers ... from enforcing ... the GATHERING ORDERS ... to the extent any such order prohibits religious worship services at Lighthouse, or in-person church services at Lighthouse if Lighthouse meets the social distancing, enhanced sanitization, and personal hygiene guidelines pursuant to which the Commonwealth allows so-called “essential” commercial and non-religious entities (e.g., beer, wine, and liquor stores, warehouse clubs, ‘big box” and ‘supercenter’ stores) to accommodate gatherings of persons without numerical limit.... Lighthouse merely seeks a TRO preventing Lighthouse,its pastor, and its members from being subject to criminal sanctions for having more than 10 people at its worship service on Sunday....Eastern Shore Post reports on the lawsuit.
The proposed resolution to the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court would allow congregations in Junction City and Dodge City to conduct in-person services if attendees complied with safety protocols. It also created a window for the governor to revise her mass-gathering order so it would no longer apply to religious meetings.
For reasons which should be obvious, this court is considerably less sympathetic to claims by a church which sought to hold indoor church services involving at least thirty-five congregants than it is to the claims by the church in the Greenville case, which sought to hold services in which the congregants stayed in their vehicles with the windows closed....
In its brief, the Church insists that its members practice “social distancing” during indoor church services, but this strikes this court as being a rather hollow guarantee, given the inherent difficulties involved in policing meetings behind closed doors and the inherent medical uncertainties with regard to what a safe Covid-19 distance actually is in the context of individuals who may be sitting together in the same room for an hour or more....
In the court’s view, allowing drive-in church services involving congregants sitting in vehicles whose windows are closed represents the practical middle ground upon which concerns about religious freedom and the safety of the community may co-exist....
At the same time, this court wishes to be clear that it does not regard the practice of “drive-in” church services as being risk-free. While it may be imagined that many attendees of such services would be family members who have already been exposed to each other, that will not always be the case. Indeed, it seems quite likely that, as with regular church services, many such attendees will be elderly parishioners who require the assistance of friends or non-resident family members to take them to the service.... [T]he Covid-19 virus disproportionately kills elderly individuals, and it may therefore be assumed that, if the holding of such “drive-in” services becomes a nationwide trend, that a significant (and possibly large) number of deaths will result. This court believes that preachers and parishioners would be well advised to take this into consideration when deciding whether or not to hold or attend such services.
While this court therefore does not regard the public policy considerations in this context as being one-sided, the First Amendment right to Free Exercise of religion is sufficiently important that some reasonable accommodations must be made for it. This court concludes that the allowing of drive-in services, with windows closed or slightly cracked open, represents a reasonable accommodation in this context, and it finds a reasonable likelihood ... that allowing such drive-in services is legally required, under either state or federal law.
absent evidence that an underlying prison regulation or policy violates the Free Exercise Clause, evidence that a correction official negligently failed to comply with an inmate’s sincerely held religious dietary beliefs does not establish a Free Exercise Clause claim under §1983.In the case, a Muslim inmate claimed that four times in 257 days, prison kitchen staff served him meals containing pork products. In rejecting plaintiff's claim, the court said in part:
[T]he Supreme Court’s cases, and all the Eighth Circuit Free Exercise decisions our research has uncovered, have involved claims alleging that a statute, or a regulation or policy implementing a statute, unconstitutionally prohibited a sincerely held religious belief or otherwise unduly burdened the free exercise of religion.
By contrast, in this case NCF’s food policies affirmatively accommodate the beliefs of inmates who do not eat pork for religious reasons. Mbonyunkiza does not challenge those policies. Rather, his Supplemental Complaint asserts that defendants are liable in damages because they did not properly implement those policies on certain occasions.
Over the past months, we have seen how important the power of prayer can be during challenging times. Today, as the holy month of Ramadan commences, I pray that those who are observing this sacred time find comfort and reassurance in their faith.
The court correctly dismissed Mayle’s challenge to Illinois’s bigamy laws on preclusion grounds, having already rejected a nearly identical challenge in his earlier federal suit.... Here the parties and issues in the bigamy challenge were identical. Likewise, the court correctly dismissed Mayle’s challenges to Illinois’s adultery and fornication laws for lack of standing. Those laws no longer are enforced, so Mayle could not show a reasonable fear of prosecution....
Here, the ADH directive, pursuant to the Governor’s Executive Order, was issued in response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Arkansas. Accordingly, even assuming, arguendo, that the district court correctly interpreted the directive to be an outright ban on all pre-viability surgical abortions in Arkansas, the directive is not subject to constitutional challenge unless it “has no real or substantial relation to” the public health crisis, or “is, beyond all question, a plain, palpable invasion of” a woman’s right to elective abortion. Jacobson, 197 U.S. at 31.... Aside from summarily stating that its conclusion is consistent with Jacobson, the district court failed to apply that requisite framework and, thus, abused its discretion.Daily Item reports on the decision.
The $349 billion in emergency loans were part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, signed into law by President Trump on March 27.
The bill provided, among other things, short-term relief for small businesses and certain non-profits affected by the disruptions from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic....
An SBA rule, however, stipulated that the funds would not go to bankruptcy debtors. Both the dioceses of Rochester and Buffalo have filed for bankruptcy in the past several months, after being named in hundreds of clergy sex abuse lawsuits filed under New York’ Child Victims Protection Act.
Defendants’ prohibition of any in person church services, in the name of fighting Covid-19, is not generally applicable. There are numerous exceptions to the March 19, 2020 Order, such as an exception for factories, or attending establishments like shopping malls, where far more people come into closer contact with less oversight.The suit also challenges the governor's travel ban. WTVQ News reports on the lawsuit. A different Kentucky federal district court has refused to restrain enforcement of the ban on mass gatherings. (See prior posting.)