Pro-life Cases The “big hitter” for this upcoming term is in the pro-life area: Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Instead of nibbling around the edges of Roe and Casey, as the abortion cases in the Court for the last several decades have done, Dobbs goes for the heart, with Mississippi arguing that the viability
The Supreme Court in Hosanna-Tabor (2012) and Our Lady of Guadalupe (2020) embraced what Justice Alito described as the “so-called ministerial exception,” a doctrine that protects religious organizations from application of anti-discrimination laws when dealing with certain employees. Why “so-called”? Because the exemption covers more than just ministers or the top officials of a religious organization. But whom else? Certainly some
In March, The National Legal Foundation filed a “friend of the court” brief urging the Supreme Court to take a case (Carson v. Makin) that could end government discrimination against religious schools in the funding context. The case involves a Maine school program that pays the private school tuition for students who live in an area that lacks a public high school. The schools eligible to receive
Amy Barrett went on the Supreme Court with the blessing of originalists everywhere. Her academic writings as a Notre Dame professor and her judicial opinions from a few years on the Seventh Circuit all indicated she was firmly in the camp of those wedded to a textualist interpretation of the original documents as understood at
The NLF and another organization have recently filed a brief with the Supreme Court in North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention v. McRaney. McRaney sued the mission board after his affiliated state board fired him as its lead executive minister, with him claiming that the national board had expressed disapproval of him
The Fourth Circuit, 2-1, has again ruled that a student born a girl has a right to present as a boy and force her way into her school’s male restrooms and locker rooms. The school’s offer to allow “Gavin” Grimm to use private facilities was “demeaning” and, in the panel majority’s opinion, violated both Title
The Ninth Circuit has just issued a ruling in which it does everything wrong. Worst of all, it pits the Establishment Clause against the Free Exercise Clause. Here are the basic facts: A football coach after a game went to the center of the field, by himself, knelt with bowed head, then went to the
Throughout the summer and into the fall, and then this winter, churches and synagogues have been pushing back against governors and local authorities who have decided that religious services are not “essential,” as those officials have defined many other businesses to allow groups of people to gather. Early efforts of churches to stop this discrimination
The National Legal Foundation (NLF) this week filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief on behalf of a Christian photographer in Loudon County, Virginia, in the of Updegrove v. Herring. The photographer, Bob Updegrove, believes that God equips people with gifts to create art that reflects God’s beauty, artistry, and truth, and that he
In Otto v. Boca Raton (Nov. 20, 2020), the Eleventh Circuit (which has jurisdiction over Florida, Georgia, and Alabama) became the first federal appellate court to rule unconstitutional one of the “anti-conversion” acts inundating the country. In doing so, it split with the Third and Ninth Circuits, which have upheld similar conversion therapy bans. This