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The Satanic Temple is asserting a free exercise right to abortion as a religious ritual in lawsuits against the state of Missouri and against a Louisiana advertising agency.
Contempt of court is a quasi-criminal act, and the court cannot punish someone for breaking a regulation if that regulation is not constitutional.
Ginsburg wrote little on the religion clauses, but she frequently joined with those Justices who favored a strong separation of church and state.
The ethical and moral onus is now on religious institutions as they decide whether to fire "ministerial" employees for reasons illegal in the secular world, such as age or the need for cancer treatment. Institutions engaging in this kind of discriminatory tactic will still need to answer to a Higher Source who will not be impressed with their ability to obtain summary judgment. The way for religious institutions to "win" these cases is to avoid them in the first place by taking the lead in treating employees with the highest degree of care and concern.
With the death of state Blaine Amendments this week, religious schools that welcome state money might find that they are now subject to regulation that may undermine their very reason for existence.
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.
The United States (U.S.) Supreme Court agreed to hear a case, Espinoza v. Montana Dept. of Revenue, concerning a Montana state legislative program that allowed individuals to receive up to a $150.00 tax credit for money that they could donate to one of several K-12 scholarship funds.
There's an old adage that bad facts make bad law, and in this case, given political exigencies, there was little to no chance that the Court would have found that the cross must be removed from public property. While we had previously anticipated that denying the case based on standing would have been the "easy answer," the Court issued a ruling today that addressed the cross on the merits. Now our attention turns to whether there is collateral damage to the substance of the Establishment Clause.
In ruling that an unwritten rule, quite possibly manufactured after the execution was already scheduled, should not be subject to a judicial Establishment Clause and potentially Free Exercise Clause analysis, the Court has created a troubling precedent that targets the principle of the rule of law.
The Virginia legislators who approved the religious freedom statute in 1786, separating church and state, recognized the potential for change, and call the Americans of 2019 and beyond to a greater truth and a higher reality.