Search Results for: Religious Freedom Restoration Act

The US Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal in Parents for Privacy v. Barr, letting stand a lower court ruling that allows transgender students to use the bathroom of their choice stand. An Oregon District Court refused to block the school district’s policy and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit [...]

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky granted a Temporary Restraining Order (treated as a preliminary injunction) on Wednesday, preventing Governor of Kentucky Andy Beshear from enforcing his recent executive order against religious private schools in the state. Governor Beshear issued Executive Order 2020-969 on November 18, 2020, which required all private [...]

In the 1970s, the federal government passed the Controlled Substance Act (“CSA”), outlawing a plethora of psychedelic substances. Many of these now illegal psychedelic plants have been used for sacramental purposes for eons. Over the following decades, a number of regulatory, statutory, and judicial exemptions were carved out of the CSA for religious use of [...]

On July 28, the University of Pittsburgh invited Professor Angela Davis, a world-renowned social justice educator and activist, to participate in a conversation on social justice and racial discrimination as part of the University of Pittsburgh’s 2020 Diversity Forum. Provost Ann Cudd and Senior Vice Chancellor Kathy Humphrey facilitated the thought-provoking conversation, and I had [...]

The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday commented on “issues of national importance regarding the interplay between the government’s compelling interest in protecting public health and safety from COVID-19 and citizens’ fundamental right to free exercise of religion,” ultimately siding with a Mississippi church. On April 7, the city of Greenville issued an “Executive [...]

The United States Supreme Court released orders on Friday that granted certiorari for six new cases, consolidating them into three hours of upcoming oral arguments. The first case, which consolidates Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth District Court and Ford Motor Co. v. Bandemer, presents  a question about personal jurisdiction. The Due Process Clause permits [...]

The US Supreme Court on Friday granted the government’s petition to hear a dispute over whether the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) allows lawsuits for money damages against individual federal employees who placed individuals on the “no fly list.” This case arose when several Muslin men—Muhammad Tanvir, Jameel Algibah and Naveed Shinwari—alleged that in retaliation [...]

The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Wednesday reversed, in part, a decision barring two religious schools in Florida from conveying prayers over a loudspeaker before a state championship football game. In 2015 Cambridge Christian School and University Christian School faced off in the Division 2A State football game. The football game was [...]

A judge for the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas ruled Tuesday that some of the Affordable Care Act‘s nondiscrimination rules based on gender identity and termination of pregnancy violate providers’ religious freedom. Judge Reed O’Connor found that these rules, included to prevent health care discrimination, violated the Administrative Procedure Act and [...]

A federal judge ruled on Monday that the state of Nevada cannot join in litigation against an Affordable Care Act (ACA) provision mandating employers to offer birth control to employees. Nevada attempted to intervene as a defendant in order to defend the provision. Originally, private citizens and companies sued the Department of Health and Human [...]