From Kuensel Online (“Bhutan’s daily news site”): Gelephu dungkhag court sentenced last week a 40-year old man to three years in prison for attempting to promote civil unrest. Prem Singh Gurung from Tarithang was arrested on May 21, after villagers in Gonggaon and Simkharkha of Jigmecholing gewog complained that he was screening movies on Christianity […]
Archive | Religious Freedom
French Constitutional Court Decision Upholds Ban on Wearing Veils in Public Places
By Ilya Somin on October 11, 2010 3:54 am in Religion, Religion and the Law, Religious Freedom, War on Terror
France’s Constitutional Council recently upheld the constitutionality of a law banning the wearing of veils in public places. The text of the decision is available in French here. Despite the importance of the issue and the large potential infringement on religious freedom, the opinion is very short and conclusory. For those of our readers who […]
County Clerk’s Office May Have Duty to Accommodate Employee With Religious Objections to Processing Same-Sex Domestic Partnerships
By Eugene Volokh on October 7, 2010 8:34 pm in Religion and the Law, Religious Freedom, Same-Sex Marriage
So holds Slater v. Douglas County (D. Or. Sept. 24, 2010) (just released on Westlaw today). For more on the general structure of employers’ duty to accommodate religious objectors (under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended in 1972), see this post. Here’s a longish excerpt from the Slater decision, applying […]
Death-Row Conversion to Satanism Admissible to Prove Future Dangerousness in Death Penalty Retrial
So says the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in Davis v. State, decided Wednesday: The First Amendment guarantees the freedoms of religion and association. It protects an individual’s right to join groups and to associate with others holding similar beliefs. However, the Constitution does not erect a per se barrier to the admission of evidence […]
Debating France’s Burqa Ban
Today’s WSJ has a debate between two members of its editorial board, Matthew Kaminski and Bret Stephens, over France’s decision to prohibit people from concealing their faces in public. The legislation is generally understood as a measure to prohibit women from wearing burqas with face veils in public. Stephens supports the measure (at least for […]
Is it Unconstitutional for DC Police to Enforce the Property Rights of Muslims Who Segregate Women in their Religious Institutions?
By Ilya Somin on September 16, 2010 10:00 pm in Property Rights, Religion and the Law, Religious Freedom
Back in June, I wrote a post defending the actions of the DC authorities who enforced the property rights of Muslim traditionalists who expelled several women from the local Islamic Center for trying to worship next to men. As an atheist and a libertarian, I have little sympathy for their views. However, a free society […]
Queensland University Suspends Lawyer for YouTube-Distributed Blasphemy
By Eugene Volokh on September 14, 2010 2:23 pm in "Hate Speech", Atheism, Blasphemy, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Speech at Colleges and Universities, Religion and the Law, Religious Freedom
The Brisbane Times reports that: A Queensland University of Technology lawyer[,] … Alex Stewart[,] has taken leave from his non-academic position as a QUT [Queensland University of Technology] commercial contracts lawyer after controversy erupted over a YouTube clip in which he smokes self-made cigarettes rolled in pages from the [Koran and the Bible] before rating […]
Ninth Circuit En Banc Panel Will Rehear Case Involving Religious Accommodations of Islamic Headscarves in Court Holding Cells
This is the case I blogged about in May. The 2-1 panel opinion (Khatib v. County of Orange), in which Judges Trott and Wardlaw were in the majority and in which Chief Judge Kozinski dissented, is here; as I mentioned at the time, “The dissent is characteristically colorful, and in my view quite persuasive.” Note […]
Interesting Freedom of Religion Case from Israel
Jerusalem Post: The Jerusalem District Labor Court last week rejected a temporary appeal by a Muslim teacher at a private Christian school to allow her to continue working after she decided to wear a hijab in class after teaching without one for 27 years. Essentially, the court rule that as a private Christian school that […]
Three Issues in the Debate over the “Ground Zero Mosque”
By Ilya Somin on August 31, 2010 1:41 am in Property Rights, Religion, Religion and the Law, Religious Freedom, War on Terror
The ongoing debate over the “Ground Zero Mosque” has generated lots of commentary. But I fear that much of it conflates three separate issues: whether the government should use its power to block the construction of the mosque, whether the construction of any Islamic facility near Ground Zero is objectionable, and whether this particular organization […]
Another Prosecution for Criticism of Religion
By Eugene Volokh on August 25, 2010 11:14 am in "Hate Speech", Freedom of Speech, Religion and the Law, Religious Freedom
The Daily News Egypt reports: Prosecutor General Abdel Meguid Mahmoud on Monday referred the publisher of Islamic books to a State Security Court on charges of contempt of the Christian religion. Publisher Ahmed Abdallah Abo-Islam, was charged for accusing Christians of fabricating the Bible and threatening social stability and security…. In [the complaint that triggered […]
Property Rights, Eminent Domain, and the “Ground Zero Mosque”
By Ilya Somin on August 23, 2010 11:02 pm in Eminent Domain, Property Rights, Religion and the Law, Religious Freedom
A few conservative commentators have advocated using the power of eminent domain to take the land on which the “Ground Zero mosque” is scheduled to be built (see here and here). The idea seems to have originated with New York Republican gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino. Legally, such a taking wouldn’t be as simple as Paladino […]
When May Religious Charitable Groups Discriminate in Employment Based on Religion?
A Ninth Circuit panel issued three very interesting opinions on this subject today in Spencer v. World Vision, Inc. The opinions are long and detailed; if you’re interested in the issue, you should read them. But here’s the short summary: 1. “World Vision describes itself as ‘a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, […]
A Brief Guide to Federal Antidiscrimination Law and Religion
I’m about to post something about an interesting new case on religious charities and employment discrimination law, so I thought it would be helpful to post this general summary I wrote a while back; I also hope to refer to it in future posts. * * * Federal job discrimination law provides three sets of […]
“46% of Americans Believe Islam Is More Likely Than Other Faiths to Encourage Violence Against Nonbelievers” = Evidence of “Islamophobia”?
“Is America Islamophobic?,” asks Time magazine. The lead story is abridged online here. I have little opinion on the title question, partly because I’m not a public opinion researcher, and partly because I don’t know what exactly “Islamophobic” means. And paragraphs such as this don’t help much: Although the American strain of Islamophobia lacks some […]