Current Events

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.

A bill making its way through the California legislature would make it legal to encourage the terminally ill to engage in physician-assisted suicide.

Although his Supreme Court case was bolstered by a cake troll on the right, cake trolls on the left are making life miserable for Colorado baker Jack Phillips.

The Senate has stripped language from a House spending bill that would have stopped the Internal Revenue Service from revoking the tax-exempt status of non-profit organizations that engage in campaigning for political candidates.

According to Sessions, the Task Force is designed to ensure that the Justice Department and other executive agencies apply the religious liberty protections already present in federal law.