The Colorado Supreme Court has thrown a lawsuit out challenging the National Day of Prayer.
The ruling by the court overturns a lower court ruling that a declaration of a day of prayer is unconstitutional.
The anti-Christian group Freedom From Religion Foundation sued in 2008 claiming that then-Governor Bill Ritter was “showing governmental preference for religion” by designating a Day of Prayer. The initial ruling in 2010 was in favor of the state.
“Plaintiffs argue that the proclamations excessively entangle government and religion because it facilitates the Colorado Day of Prayer festivities. In light of the fact that most festivities are planned well in advance of the proclamation’s issuance, this argument is not credible,” wrote Judge Michael Mullins. “Announcing that people will in fact gather to celebrate a public holiday does not necessarily involve the state in any way in the planning of religious activities.”
The anti-Christianists then appealed and the Colorado Court of Appeals overturned the lower court decision.
The Supreme Court threw out the case on a 5-2 decision.
“Although we do not question the sincerity of respondents’ feelings, without more, their circuitous exposure to the honorary proclamations and concomitant belief that the proclamations expressed the Governor’s preference for religion is simply too indirect and incidental an injury to confer individual standing,” wrote Chief Justice Nancy Rice.
“To hold otherwise would render the injury-in-fact requirement superfluous, as any person who learned of a government action through the media and felt politically marginalized as a result of that secondhand media exposure would have individual standing to sue the government.”
Religious freedom attorneys have filed a lawsuit in California aimed at protecting the religious freedom of a first grade student who was harassed by his school for handing out candy canes last Christmas with a message of Jesus.
Isaiah Martinez was told by his teacher “Jesus is not allowed in school” and prohibited from handing out the candy canes.
Advocates for Faith & Freedom filed suit in U.S. District Court to prohibit the West Covina Unified School District from stopping Isaiah’s distribution of the candy canes this year.
“The school has neglected to correct its actions, and after exhausting all options to avoid a lawsuit we were left with no choice but to file a complaint in federal court. We are asking the court to protect Isaiah’s rights and the rights of others like him from having their religious speech censored. Students do not shed their First Amendment rights just because they enter into a classroom,” attorney Robert Tyler said.
There has been no official statement from the school, however attorney James Long with the AFF says the school has made it clear they want only “religious neutrality.”
A Christian teenager has sued his school after he was prohibited from praying, singing and discussing religious topics with classmates during the school’s “free period.”
Chase Windebank, a senior at Pine Creek High School, has been leading a group for the last three years that meets during what the school calls the “seminar” period. On Mondays and Wednesdays students can participate in a variety of activities and students with passing grades may also do so on Fridays.
“During the free time, students are permitted to engage in a virtually unlimited variety of activities, including gathering with other students inside or outside; reading; sending text messages to their friends; playing games on their phone; visiting the bathrooms; getting a snack; visiting teachers; and conducting official meetings of school clubs,” states Alliance Defending Freedom.
The school claims that because the “Seminar” is considered class time, they’re now banning Christian students from meeting. The school has not backed down despite it being shown that their actions are violations of the Constitution.
“Public schools should encourage the free exchange of ideas. Instead, this school implemented an ill-conceived ban that singles out religious speech for censorship during free time,” remarked ADF Senior Legal Counsel Jeremy Tedesco.
A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted to review a case that claims police officers in Dearborn, Michigan failed to protect the freedom of speech for Christian preachers.
The court had ruled in August in a 2-1 decision the police did not violate the free speech rights of “Bible Believers” but voted in favor of a review, which is “intended to bring to the attention of the entire court a precedent setting error of exceptional public importance.”
Ruben Israel, a street preacher who organized the Dearborn outreach, told the Christian Post the review is about protecting free speech in America.
“We had to get [the case] out of Dearborn and we had to get it out of Detroit. Now, since the circuit has picked it up, we believe and trust that they will set the record straight,” Israel said in an interview with The Christian Post. “Free speech sometimes may not be very gracious. But there is something called ‘the hecklers veto.’ That is when you can say something very unpopular and it is protected. We believe that since the circuit wants to and has gone ahead and picked it up, now we believe that we have a pulse. We are thankful for our court system that we still have the appeal case and that’s working.”
The group was blocked by police from preaching in the majority Muslim town outside of a Muslim street festival.
“I told [the police officer] that we were already getting pelted with water bottles and he says ‘oh that’s Ok, we will keep an eye out for you.’ He turned around and he walked away. Of course, that was it,” Israel said. “The police did confront us several times. Every time they came to talk to us and tell us that we had to leave, everything got stopped. Once they walked away, it just turned around and did the same thing all over again.
The California Catholic Conference has taken the state government to court over the state’s order that all Catholic institutions pay for voluntary direct abortions.
The abortions that must be covered include abortions for gender selection and for late-term abortions.
“Catholic beliefs about life and human dignity animate and shape our Catholic ministries,” Bishop Robert McElroy, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of San Francisco told the Christian Post. “It’s why we oppose abortion, but it is also why Catholic schools provide education, Catholic hospitals care for the poor and vulnerable and why Catholic social services provide assistance to people and families in need. It goes to the core of our moral beliefs.”
The group claims that the state’s orders violate federal human rights laws.
“This is a coercive and discriminatory action by the state of California,” McElroy added. “This demand by the state was directly targeted at Catholic institutions like Santa Clara University, Loyola Marymount University, along with other California employers and citizens. It is a flagrant violation of their civil rights and deepest moral convictions, and is government coercion of the worst kind.”
Abortionists have filed a lawsuit against the state of Louisiana over a law that the claim will force them to close.
HB 388 passed the Louisiana House of Representatives 88-5 and the Senate 34-3. The bill would require abortionists to obtain admitting privileges if a woman is injured during an abortion and require further medical care.
“On the date the abortion is performed or induced, a physician performing or inducing an abortion shall have active admitting privileges at a hospital that is located not further than thirty miles from the location at which the abortion is performed or induced and that provides obstetrical or gynecological health care services,” the bill reads.
The lawsuit claims that there is not a sufficient amount of time from the passage of the law until it goes into effect for the clinics to obtain the approvals necessary to stay open after September 1st.
Laws similar to the Louisiana law have been upheld in most other states including Texas, where at the end of 2014 it’s predicted only 6 of 41 abortion clinics will remain open.
A virulent anti-Christian organization is threatening a Mississippi school district after a pastor delivered a prayer and sermon at a convocation for teachers this month.
The American Humanist Association sent a letter to the superintendent of the Jackson Public School District on Monday claiming they were representing an anonymous teacher who attended the event. The AHA claims the teacher said attendance at the event was mandatory.
The speaker was Pastor Roy Maine, who works as an electrician in the district. He was invited to deliver an opening prayer and he offered words of exhortation during his invocation.
The anti-Christian group says their anonymous client described the event as “one long church service.”
Attorney Monica Miller of the anti-Christian group said that if the school does not bar the use of religious speech at events they could file a lawsuit.
“This letter serves as an official notice of the unconstitutional activity and demands that the school district terminate this and any similar illegal activity immediately. To avoid legal action, we kindly ask that you notify us in writing within two weeks of receipt of this letter setting forth the steps you will take to rectify this constitutional infringement,” Miller wrote.
The school district acknowledged receiving the letter but did not offer a public response to the letter’s content.
An anti-Christian organization is threatening to sue the Missouri National Guard because a display of Bibles was located on a base.
The anti-Christian American Humanist Association had a lawyer send a threatening letter to the Missouri National Guard demanding the removal of a display of Gideon Bibles from the General Services Administration building in St. Louis.
The AHA claims that the Bibles in a government building “represents a clear breach of the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution.”
“The machinery of the U.S. military … is being used to distribute Bibles,” the letter claims. “ … The religious endorsement is particularly egregious in this case because unlike in many of the school cases where private citizens distributed the Bibles, the government is the entity distributing the Bibles here.”
The Bibles are available for someone to take if they want them but they are not given to soldiers nor are soldiers required to take them. Various courts have permitted similar placement of Bibles across the nation.
However, the anti-Christianists say the mere existence of the Bibles is coercion.
The city of Overland Park, Kansas has learned a very expensive lesson about violating the religious freedom of Christians.
The city has paid $50,000 in legal fees after a court ruled the violated the rights of Christians who were handing out materials about their soccer camp at a city-owned soccer complex. The city had banned Victory Through Jesus Sports Ministries from handing out flyers on the sidewalk. The U.S. District Court ruled that there was no difference between those sidewalks and any other public sidewalk.
Gordon Hunjak of Victory Through Jesus Sports Ministries filed suit after they were threatened with arrest for continuing to hand out the materials. The city then passed a law saying that the soccer park and surrounding area was “a non-public forum.”
The city’s defense to the court was that they were trying to control litter and the flow of pedestrian traffic into the facility. The court said if that was really the case, the response of the city was excessive.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Hunjak, said in a statement that the case should warn other cities that it is important to respect the religious freedom of citizens.
A federal appeals court has told a group of anti-Christianists that “the cross at Ground Zero” is not an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
The group American Atheists had demanded the cross be removed because it violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.
“American Atheists contend that the Port Authority and the foundation impermissibly promote Christianity in violation of the Establishment Clause and deny atheists equal protection of the laws by displaying the cross at Ground Zero in the museum unaccompanied by some item acknowledging that atheists were among the victims and rescuers on September 11,” read the opinion.
“American Atheists acknowledge that there is no historic artifact that speaks particularly to the loss of atheists’ lives or to atheists’ rescue efforts … we conclude that American Atheists’ challenge fails on the merits. Accordingly, we hereby affirm the judgment in favor of appellees.”
The president of American Atheists says it’s not fair that a cross is in the 9/11 Museum and his group can’t put up some kind of tribute to atheists, even though the “cross” wasn’t given by any Christian group but rather discovered as part of the debris of the Twin Towers.
“They’re trying to Christianize 9/11 with this cross and it’s not American and it’s not fair,” said David Silverman.
The anti-Christianist group will likely appeal the decision.