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The Solicitor General of the United States, Noel Francisco, has recommended that the United States Supreme Court agree to consider a Sabbath accommodation case involving a Seventh-day Adventist.
This morning, Congressman Chris Stewart (UT-02) introduced the Fairness for All Act (FFA) to resolve conflicts between the rights of LGBT individuals and the religious liberty rights of individuals.
In a 147-page ruling issued today, New York Federal Judge Paul Engelmayer found that the Trump administration’s “conscience act” exceeded the president’s authority but did not violate the Establishment Clause. Given its procedural defects, the rule was invalidated in its entirety.
The Kentucky Supreme Court has ruled that an organization that sued Hands On Originals (“Hands On”), a t-shirt print company, for discrimination lacked standing as an “individual” to pursue the claim.
Earlier this month, presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke stated that he would support removing the tax-exempt status of organizations and institutions that oppose same-sex marriage. Specifically, O’Rourke said, “There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break for anyone or any institution or organization in America that denies the full human rights, and the full civil rights of everyone in America.”
A Colorado doctor who sued Centura Health, a Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist network of hospitals, for the right to dispense aid in dying medication was fired last week for violating a provision of her employment that prohibited her from encouraging assisted suicide or euthanasia.
The Free Exercise Clause that guarantees religious freedom is much weaker than most people realize. While freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and even the establishment clause are subject to highest “strict scrutiny” levels of protection, the free exercise of religion receives the lowest level of protection – the “rational basis test.”
Too broad an exception from neutral, generally applicable law, and protections against discrimination vanish. Too narrow an exception and free exercise of religion protections vanish. What is clear is that these cases will continue to make their way through the lower courts with differing results until the Supreme Court makes a decision.
Taking the significance of the public health emergency and religious beliefs into account when deciding what to do in these circumstances is difficult. It is too easy to dismiss religious claims as unscientific and foolish in the face of a measles outbreak, but in so doing it behooves the parties to seek a compromise
Whether a religious symbol or edifice needs to masquerade as a secular structure in order to escape Establishment Clause scrutiny is at issue in two major cases at the United State Supreme Court.