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Religious Institutions Update: November 2012

Nearly everyone uses social media these days, from Facebook and LinkedIn to YouTube and Twitter. Employers have learned that social media can be a valuable recruiting device, enabling them to identify candidates with the...more

Washington Rejects Clergy Negligent Supervision/Retention Claims in Church Quarrel

The Supreme Court of Washington recently limited negligent supervision and negligent retention claims against churches, based on the First Amendment and deference to religious tribunals. Title VII claims may also be limited,...more

Good News in the Schoolhouse

In Child Evangelism Fellowship v. Minneapolis Special School Dist. No. 1, the Eighth Circuit recently provided guidance on how religious community organizations may partner with school districts and on the interaction between...more

Monitoring Spiritual and Mental Health for Religious Workers Without Violating the ADA

Religious organizations may have particular spiritual and safety concerns around mental health issues for their workers. A recent holding that requiring employees to get mental health counseling is likely a violation of the...more

Religious Institutions: September 2012 Update

A corporation is an artificial or fictional person, ordinarily distinct from both its individual members or shareholders and its subsidiaries and affiliates, even when owned by just one person. A key reason many organizations...more

Reprise of the Hosanna-Tabor Facts and Principles

A recent case is an eerie factual copycat of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, an employment law case in a church and school that applied the constitutional ministerial exception doctrine....more

Cases Seek "Legal Personhood" for Animals

Published on the National Business Institute Continuing Legal Education (CLE) website as an installment in Michael Kaiser's Animal-Law blog. http://cleblog.nbi-sems.com/2012/07/legal-personhood-for-animals/ ...more

Students for Concealed Carry on Campus v. University of Colorado

Opinion

The Students for Concealed Carry on Campus filed a complaint against the University of Colorado’s Board of Regents and others alleging that the Board’s Weapons Control Policy violated the Colorado Concealed Carry...more

OBLIGATION IGNORED: WHY INTERNATIONAL LAW REQUIRES THE UNITED STATES TO PROVIDE ADEQUATE CIVIL LEGAL AID, WHAT THE UNITED STATES...

Exploring international legal obligations to provide civil legal aid, assessing U.S. compliance, and suggesting improved civil legal aid through the use of Legal Empowerment techniques that have been successful in other...more

Johnson v. Whitehead, et. al

Equal Protection challenge to Citizenship Law w/ Classifications based on Illegitimacy & Sex

Today, the UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic at American University Washington College of Law filed a petition for Writ of Certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging, on Equal Protection grounds, a federal...more

Implications of the CLS v. Martinez Supreme Court Decision

In CLS v. Martinez, the Hastings College of Law sought to impose a nondiscrimination policy that required all student organizations to accept as members and officers any student who attended the law school, even if that...more

Material Support Laws: Combating Terrorism or Terrorizing Peace?

Alternatively hailed as a bulwark in our nation's war on terrorism and denounced as a descent into a new era of McCarthyism, the Supreme Court's June 21, 2010 decision in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project could have a...more