Jewish Divorce Talk: Episode 3 - Intimacy Talk
Jewish Divorce Talk: Episode 2 - Sexual Abuse Prevention Talk
Jewish Divorce Talk: Episode 1 - Get Refusal Talk
Religious Use Law in South Florida
Vaccine Exemption Policy Requiring Citation to Official Doctrine Violates First Amendment Madison Houghton and Nathan A. Adams IV In Does 1-11 v. Bd. of Regents of Univ. of Colorado, 100 F. 4th 1251 (10th Cir. 2024), former...more
Some scholars say early spiritual practices regularly involved sacraments that elicited psychedelic experiences. See, e.g., Brian C. Muraresku, The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name (2020)....more
OFCCP has announced a proposal to rescind the Trump-era final rule “Implementing Legal Requirements Regarding the Equal Opportunity Clause’s Religious Exemption”. As described in the Proposal:...more
Key Cases - School States Claim Against State Superintendent for Unconstitutional Discrimination In Bethel Ministries, Inc. v. Salmon, No. SAG-19-01853, 2019 WL 6034988 (D. Md. Nov. 14, 2019), the court denied Maryland...more
Key Cases - Covert Surveillance Due to Religious Identity is Actionable - Government surveillance of individuals due to their religious identity is actionable under federal law. In Fazaga v. Federal Bureau of...more
A United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee recently ruled that Layman Lessons Church and Welcome Baptist Church, Inc. (“Layman Lessons”) can move forward with most, but not all, of its religious...more
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Key Cases - Establishment Challenge to Presidential Proclamation Subject to Rational Basis Review - In Trump v. Hawaii, 138 S.Ct. 2392 (2018), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the lowest level of constitutional...more
Since 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court has expressly construed a neutral law of general applicability as consistent with the free exercise clause. Deeming Colorado's public accommodations law just such a law, the Colorado Court...more
A district court in the Southern District of Florida has dismissed as unripe claims brought by Centro de Ensenanza Palabra de Fe, Inc. (“Centro”), a tax-exempt religious organization that operates a daycare center and...more
Do 1,400 cattle and 17.4 million gallons of cow waste in open-air lagoons, upwind and a half a mile from a religious youth summer camp, impose a substantial burden? As unpleasant as a concentrated animal feed operation...more
Timely Topics - By Shannon B. Hartsfield - The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced on Jan. 18, 2018, the creation of a new division within its Office for Civil Rights (OCR). OCR is described as...more
Timely Topics - Serious data breaches have become routine in the United States, yet a recent survey shows that the majority of religious institutions do not have a full-time IT professional, have no system to detect a...more
Timely Topics - The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard oral argument in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer, No. 15-577. The lawsuit concerns whether the daycare operated by a Missouri church may qualify...more
The District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting the City of Markham from requiring the Original Bible Church of Illinois to obtain conditional use approval to use property...more
A federal district court in Tennessee recently dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction a claim by the Islamic Center of Nashville (ICN) lawsuit challenging a Tennessee property tax exemption law on religious freedom...more
The Islamic Center of Nashville (ICN) recently filed a federal complaint and request for declaratory judgment against the State of Tennessee, the Metropolitan Trustee of Nashville, and the Tennessee State Board of...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit recently upheld the convictions of two ministers of the Hawaii Cannabis Ministry who admitted using and distributing large quantities of cannabis in accordance with their...more
The District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has rejected RLUIPA and other claims asserted by a religious group in Affordable Recovery Housing v. City of Blue Island (N.D. Ill. 2016). The case stems from...more
Timely Topics - The death of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia will have an uncertain effect on religious institutions. Justice Scalia delivered the majority opinion in Employment Div. v. Smith, 494 U.S...more
Oklevueha Native American Church (Church) was established in 1997 in Utah by Plaintiff James Mooney and his wife Linda, who are each of Native American decent. According to the complaint in Oklevueha Native American Church...more
A federal court in Illinois, in Church of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ v. City of Markham, Illinois (N.D. Ill. 2015), dismissed some of the Church’s religious land use claims while allowing others to proceed. The case is...more
Timely Topics - Church splits and property disputes are not new, but they have certainly grown in number in recent years. In the seminal case on church property disputes, Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 679, 20 L....more