The U.S. Supreme Court did not issue any merits opinions today, but there were two dissents from denials of cert. that merit attention, both concerning the First Amendment....more
On April 15, 2025, the United States District Court for the District of North Dakota issued its decision granting partial summary judgment to the Catholic Benefits Association, on behalf of its members and the Bismarck...more
On April 4, 2025, the final day of Georgia’s legislative session, Governor Brian Kemp signed into law a “religious liberty” bill that will strengthen protections for the free exercise of religion by prohibiting state and...more
The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) rules mandating that employers provide abortion-related accommodations are facing intensifying legal challenges now that a federal appeals court allowed a group of states to challenge...more
Fired Pastor's Ousting During Church Service Did Not Violate His Free Exercise Rights Anthony J. Sirven In Couzens v. City of Forest Park, Ohio, 114 F.4th 571, 574 (6th Cir. 2024), church leaders hired off-duty municipal...more
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
On April 2, 2024, Governor Kim Reynolds signed Senate File 2095, the Iowa Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which became effective immediately. Iowa’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) is modeled on a similar law...more
A federal appeals court panel in New Orleans is poised to uphold a lower court ruling enjoining the enforcement of the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) requirement that most private health insurance cover recommendations of the...more
The Church of the Celestial Heart is a California nonprofit religious corporation seeks to import and use a sacramental tea. It so happens that this tea, which is also called Daime or ayahuasca, carries trace amounts of a...more
The Virginia Supreme Court ruled in favor of a high school teacher, finding that the circuit court wrongly dismissed the teacher’s claims against his former employer, who had terminated the teacher after he refused to use a...more
Failure to Extend Extracurricular Opportunities to Parochial School Students Violates Free Exercise In Religious Rights Foundation of Pa. v. State College Area Sch. Dist., No. 23-CV-01144, 2023 WL 8359957 (M.D. Pa. Dec. 1,...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: As reported here, for the two-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings regarding Article III standing in TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez (“TransUnion”), the Workplace Class Action blog is providing a...more
The teacher had a religious objection. The Virginia Supreme Court yesterday found in favor of a West Point public school teacher whose employment was terminated because he would not address a transgender student by the...more
Supreme Court Decides Freedom of Speech Trumps Public Accommodations Law In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, No. 21-476 (June 30, 2023), the U.S. Supreme Court reversed 6-3 the lower courts' denial of the injunction the plaintiff...more
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently ruled that prohibitions against discriminatory employment practices against the LGTBQ+ community under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are inapplicable to...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In Braidwood Management, Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Fifth Circuit endorsed for-profit employers integrating their religious beliefs into their employment policies to apply the...more
In Braidwood Management, Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that religious employers may be exempt from Title VII requirements concerning sexual...more
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County decision recognized discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity as forms of sex discrimination, essentially incorporating such claims into Title...more
In Ratliff v. Wycliffe Assoc., Inc., No. 6:22-cv-1185-PGB-RMN, 2023 WL 3688082 (M.D. Fla. May 26, 2023), the plaintiff, a software developer, sued the defendant, a Bible translation ministry, for sex discrimination under...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
A Texas district court judge has overruled certain preventive care mandates of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), holding that they are unconstitutional and, in one case, violate the Religious Freedom...more
On March 30, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas vacated actions taken by HHS to implement provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that require health insurance plans to include coverage for...more
On March 30, 2023, the District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued an opinion and order in Braidwood Mgmt. Inc. v. Becerra that vacates the implementation and enforcement of certain preventive service provisions...more
Donors State Claims for Misuse of Their Funds, But Not as a Class Action - In Carrier v. Ravi Zacharias Int'l Ministries, Inc. No. 1:21-CV-3161-TWT, 2022 WL 1540206 (N.D. Ga. May 13, 2022) and Carrier v. Ravi Zacharias...more
The US Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury (the Departments) recently issued a proposed rule (the proposed rule) to eliminate a moral exemption to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) contraceptive mandate...more