Religious Use Law in South Florida
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
Maine Scholarship Program Excluding Sectarian Schools Unconstitutional. In Carson v. Makin, 142 S.Ct. 1987 (2022), the U.S. Supreme Court struck a tuition assistance program that requires school districts to transmit payment...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
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
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 - 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
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
Below are news items from the past week involving local government, religion, and land use that may be of interest to our readers. - The New York Times reports that the Ten Commandments monument on the Oklahoma Capitol...more
Respondeat superior (literally, "let the master answer" in Latin) is a doctrine that applies when an employer or principal has the ability and authority to direct and control the pertinent acts of the employee. Put otherwise,...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
In Holy Ghost Revival Ministries v. City of Marysville (W.D. Washington), the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington considered claims of religious discrimination brought by Holy Ghost Revival Ministries...more
We previously reported on the case Cornerstone Church by the Bay v. Town of Bayview, Texas, in which the Church and the Laguna Madre Christian Academy are suing the Town (population approx. 400) under the Religious Land Use &...more