On April 15, 2025, the United States District Court for the District of North Dakota issued its decision granting partial summary judgment to the Catholic Benefits Association, on behalf of its members and the Bismarck...more
Vaccine Exemption Policy Requiring Citation to Official Doctrine Violates First Amendment Madison Houghton and Nathan A. Adams IV In Does 1-11 v. Bd. of Regents of Univ. of Colorado, 100 F. 4th 1251 (10th Cir. 2024), former...more
On April 2, 2024, Governor Kim Reynolds signed Senate File 2095, the Iowa Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which became effective immediately. Iowa’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) is modeled on a similar law...more
The teacher had a religious objection. The Virginia Supreme Court yesterday found in favor of a West Point public school teacher whose employment was terminated because he would not address a transgender student by the...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In Braidwood Management, Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Fifth Circuit endorsed for-profit employers integrating their religious beliefs into their employment policies to apply the...more
In Ratliff v. Wycliffe Assoc., Inc., No. 6:22-cv-1185-PGB-RMN, 2023 WL 3688082 (M.D. Fla. May 26, 2023), the plaintiff, a software developer, sued the defendant, a Bible translation ministry, for sex discrimination under...more
Last summer, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, which held that the protected classification of “sex” under Title VII included sexual orientation and gender identity....more
Following on the heels of its final rule clarifying the religious exemption found at Section 204(3) of Executive Order (EO) 11246 and codified at 41 C.F.R. 60-1.5(a)(5) (the Exemption), OFCCP this week issued an Opinion...more
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On April 12, 2016, a district court in Nebraska rejected the religious accommodation claims advanced by a member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.1 In denying the religious accommodation claims, the court was...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
As part of its requirement that non-grandfathered group health plans provide benefits for certain preventive care without cost sharing, the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) requires these plans to cover at least one form of...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
Almost every day the news carries an additional story about Kim Davis, the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who has defied the Supreme Court by refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The Kim Davis story may be...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