Churches and other religious organizations can file petitions to sponsor foreign workers for religious worker (R-1) status in the United States—a status that can last up to five years. However, poor planning and well-meaning...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
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
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
Religious Exemption to States' Mandatory Vaccination Statute Not Necessary In Does 1-6 v. Mills, No. 1:21-cv-00242, 2021 WL 4783626 (D. Me. Oct. 13, 2021), the court denied injunctive relief to plaintiff healthcare workers...more
Morals Clause Ruled Not Within Title VII Religious Exemptions Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it unlawful "to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any...more
In Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn, N.Y. v. Cuomo, No. 20A87, 2020 WL 6948354 (U.S. Nov. 25, 2020) (per curiam), the U.S. Supreme Court enjoined enforcement of the 10- and 25-person occupancy limits on churches in New York...more
Several recent cases concern challenges to executive orders relating to COVID-19 limiting the ability of churches to assemble and imposing other limitations. Beginning with appellate decisions, these cases are summarized in...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
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
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
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
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
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 what continues to be a controversial and developing area of employment law, a federal appellate court recently validated the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) “opt out” provision, finding that requiring nonprofit employers to...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
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