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A court in India has dismissed a petition by a Parsi (Zoroastrian) woman who had married a Hindu man and who wanted a court order that would assure her right to enter Parsi religious places to witness the last rites for her parents when they die.  The Valsad Parsi Anjuman Trust had previously barred another [...]

In Bendross v. Readon, (FL Aoo., Feb. 15, 2012), a Florida appeals court held that the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine does not apply to prevent a civil court from adjudicating a dispute over the make up of the a church’s board.  Bible Missionary Baptist Church was incorporated as a non-profit corporation under Florida law. Eugene Rice, a member [...]

In Regina v. D.J.W., (B.C. Ct. App., Dec. 22, 2011), the British Columbia Court of Appeal held that a father who botched an attempt at home to perform a religious circumcision on his 4-year old son should have been convicted of assault with a weapon and aggravated assault instead of “criminal negligence causing bodily harm”.   [...]

In In re the Marriage of John and Angela Bell, (CA App., Nov. 18, 2011), a California appellate court upheld a trial court’s order in a marriage dissolution case preventing the father from continuing taking the couple’s young children to Mormon religious services and Sunday School without the mother’s consent.  The order would expire when the [...]

Utah’s Senate Bill 314, signed by the governor last March, imposes new limitations on liquor licenses and the sale of alcoholic beverages. Among other things, it eliminates discount pricing of alcoholic beverages offered by social clubs and links the issuance of liquor licenses to social clubs to both population quotas and the number of public [...]

You’ll recall that the plaintiffs in Fisher v. Texas asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld a race-based admissions policy at the University of Texas (UT). The plaintiffs contend the school discriminated against them on the basis of race. Yesterday, the SCOTUSblog [...]

In a decision that has just become available, Sapp v. School Board of Alachua County, Florida, (ND FL, Sept. 30, 2011), a Florida federal district court upheld against free expression challenges a school’s dress codes that were applied to send students home for wearing T-shirts carrying the slogan “Islam is of the Devil.”  The children who [...]

In Pakistan, the Lahore High Court is hearing a lawsuit seeking a permanent ban in the country on access to the social netwrking site Facebook because it has hosted a page titled “2nd Annual Draw Muhammad Day-May 20, 2011.” According to Pakistan Today, yesterday, the court issued a temporary order while the case is pending, [...]

In Hughes v. Hosemann, (MI Sup. Ct., Sept. 8, 2011), the Mississippi Supreme Court rejected on ripeness grounds an attempt to remove from November’s ballot an initiative measure that would define “person” in the state constitution as including “every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning, or the functional equivalent thereof.” The court held that: [...]

Eight years ago, Justice Anthony Kennedy dissented in Grutter v. Bollinger, the case that upheld “plus factor” racial preferences. In 2003, Kennedy and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor were the swing votes on the U.S. Supreme Court. O’Connor is gone, and now the court has a conservative bloc of four justices (as opposed to three in [...]