Posts Tagged ‘Free Exercise Clause’
Protecting Rights of Conscience — Stormans v. Selecky (Hannah Smith in the Deseret News)
February 7, 2012
On Feb. 1, a federal court near Seattle, Wash., heard closing arguments in a case about the right of conscience, a fundamental American principle (Stormans, Inc. v. Selecky). That right is the freedom from governmental coercion to violate one’s religious convictions. A pharmacy owned for four generations by the Stormans family (Ralph’s Thriftway) and two [...]
Ward v. Polite (Ward v. Wilbanks)
January 3, 2012
Julea Ward was kicked out of her Eastern Michigan University’s counseling program after she declined to counsel a student against her religious beliefs. Ward lost in the lower courts but on January 27, 2012, the Sixth Circuit issued a major victory for the constitutional rights of individuals with religious beliefs. The court held that Eastern Michigan [...]
Merced v. Euless (2009)
December 17, 2011
Protecting the right to freely worship at home, the Becket Fund represented a Santeria priest in Texas who—because of discriminatory state action—was unable to perform certain religious rituals in his own home. In an important ruling under the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth [...]
NRO: Pharmacists’ Conscience Rights on Trial
December 9, 2011
Conscience rights battled out in federal court.
Belmont Abbey College v. Sebelius (2011-Current)
November 10, 2011
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty represents Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic liberal arts college founded by Benedictine monks, in a lawsuit against the federal government to protect Belmont Abbey’s right to be true to its principles. As a Catholic college, Belmont Abbey teaches that contraception, sterilization, and abortion are against God’s law. So in [...]
Breathing a sigh of relief for sacred religious practices (Hannah Smith in the Deseret News)
October 29, 2011
In early October, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that prohibits local governments from banning the practice of male circumcision. Unless challenged in the courts, this new state law appears to resolve a year-long debate that caught the attention of the U.S. Congress. At a time when victories for the rights of religious individuals [...]
USA Today- In Hosanna-Tabor, government should butt out
October 3, 2011
Led by the non-sectarian Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Hosanna-Tabor’s defenders know that a decision against the church could have terrible consequences for freedom of conscience in America.
University of Virginia Law School Blog – Laycock to Argue Religious Employment Discrimination Case Before U.S. Supreme Court
September 30, 2011
University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock will argue before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday that the justices should retain limits on the ability of employees of religious organizations to sue for employment discrimination. Laycock, a leading expert on the law of religious liberty, is the counsel of record for a religious church and [...]
Yoder v. Morristown, New York (2006 – present)
July 27, 2011
A community of Swartzentruber Amish has been living peaceably in Morristown, New York for decades, and though they practice a traditional form of the Amish faith, they had never had trouble obtaining building permits or legally maintaining their homes and property. This changed in 2006 when the Amish began to receive tickets from the town [...]
