Three  former employees Silvia Spencer, Ted Youngberg, and Vicki Hulse had had filed suit against the well-known humanitarian organization in 2007, claiming they had been victims of religious discrimination when they were fired because they did not agree with the religious beliefs of the organization. When hired, they had acknowledged their agreement and compliance with World Vision’s Statement of Faith, Core Values, and Mission Statement, but they later denied the diety of Jesus Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity.

In a 2-1 decision, the 9th Circuit ruled that despite the fact that secular organizations could provide the same or similar services, World Vision is a religious organization in practice and in its Articles of Incorporation, and provides Christian religious and missionary services.  The court ruled that World Vision is free to continue faith-based hiring.

In a statement, World Vision applauded the court’s decision, “Our Christian faith has been the foundation of our work since the organization was established in 1950, and our hiring policy is vital to the integrity of our mission to serve the poor as followers of Jesus Christ. . . . World Vision will continue to vigorously defend our organization’s freedom to hire employees who share our faith, as do other religious organizations, whether Muslim, Buddhist, Jewish, or Christian.”

World Vision is known for its child sponsorship program which provides donors the opportunity to make monthly donations toward the education of children in impoverished countries for $1 a day.  The organization is purported to serve over 100 million children in 100 countries around the world. For more information, visit http://www.worldvision.org

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• The 9th Circuit’s Ruling in Sylvia Spencer v. World Vision Inc. is available here.  In this reviewer’s opinion, the concurring opinion of Judge Andrew Kleinfeld beginning at p. 12259, provides an excellent primer on how Title VII applies to religious organizations.

This is an analysis of the courtroom proceedings in Perry v. Schwarzenegger and the August 4, 2010 decision by Judge Vaughn Walker upholding the right of same-sex couples to marry and not an analysis of the moral reasoning behind either position.

Summary

In short, Judge Walker ruled based on the evidence presented, as any trial judge should, and regardless of his own personal sexual orientation or biases, Prop 8 supporters simply did not make a viable case for themselves. Sloganeering may have won the election but did not win a trial where real evidence was required. Prop 8 supporters may later look at the ruling and claim it was wrongly decided but as this essay points out, the reality is that they did a poor job presenting their evidence and only put two witnesses on the stand, both of whom had previously written statements that contradicted their testimony in favor of Prop 8. When both of these witnesses were neutralized, Prop 8 advocates had nothing left with which to prove their case and any effort by any judge to add in facts to uphold Prop 8 would have been the very definition of judicial activism.

How Prop 8 Became Law

In May 2008, the California Supreme Court held that same-sex marriage was permissible under the state constitution and thousands of same-sex couples were married. In November 2008, by a vote of 52% to 48% California voters passed Proposition 8 ( “Prop 8″ ) a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriage.

This constitutional amendment was argued before the California Supreme Court. At oral argument in March 2009, the court asked Ken Starr, lead counsel in favor of Prop 8, whether there was any limitation to what the people could do.

Speaking of the state constitution, Starr replied, “The right of the people is inalienable to change their constitution through the amendment process. The people are sovereign and they can do very unwise things, and things that tug at the equality principle.”

Despite the vast implications of Starr’s statement, the court found itself powerless to overturn Prop 8.

The Question Before the Court

When David Boies and Theodore Olson brought suit against Prop 8 in Federal Court alleging that the equality principle of the Federal Constitution was violated when the people of California took away the existing right to marry, the argument focused on a simple question, “Is there a compelling state reason, or even a rational basis, for California to prohibit same-sex marriage?”

During the run-up to the November 2008, Prop 8 supporters were free to say anything to get votes. They took full advantage of this by portraying a parade of horrors that same-sex marriage would bring and played to gut-level anti-homosexual feelings. They argued that churches would be forced to perform gay marriages. They argued that it would lead to increases in child molestation. They argued that the Bible said homosexuality was wrong and that the state law should mirror the Bible.

But in Federal court, Prop 8 supporters needed to present legal, secular empirical evidence to support the idea that same-sex marriage was such a threat that the government was compelled to put a stop to it. This argument was made more difficult by the fact that a handful of states already approved same-sex marriage.

In this context, personal or religious convictions and moral arguments needed to be backed up with objective facts. Unlike the California Supreme Court, Judge Walker was not beholden to the simple fact that the California constitution had been amended. He was charged with examining the evidence for and against Prop 8 in light of the U.S. Constitution.

The Evidence Presented

As in any trial, the judge would have to make a decision based on the evidence presented. He did not have the luxury of filling in the gaps in the testimony in order to reach a decision in line with his own feelings, which is the hallmark of being an “activist judge.” Rather, he had to rule based on the facts presented, and this is what he did in his lengthy ruling which is available online athttp://www.scribd.com/doc/35374801/Prop-8-Ruling

To challenge Prop 8, same-sex marriage advocates brought forward eight lay-witnesses, including two same-sex couples, and nine expert witnesses. The lay-witnesses described their feelings of being discriminated against and the idea that the law was not fair. Expert witnesses testified to various facts and statistics that they said demonstrated that same-sex marriage was not socially harmful. These were the standard arguments that same-sex marriage proponents have been making for years and there really was nothing new or novel.

Same-sex marriage advocates even called Hak-Shing William Tam on the stand in order to demonstrate that voters had been given incorrect information and voted based on anti-homosexual prejudice. Tam’s name had appeared next to the ballot arguments in the voter information pamphlets in the run-up to the November 2008 election. Tam had helped craft many of the arguments for Prop 8 and he testified that, as he stated on his website promoting Prop 8, he believed that homosexuals were 12 times more likely to be pedophiles, but could not state where he got this information.

Tam also admitted he had stated that incest and polygamy had been legalized in the Netherlands soon after the country legalized same-sex marriage in 2001. This was factually untrue. The questioning went like this:

David Boies: “You are saying here that after same-sex marriage was legalized, the Netherlands legalized same incest and polygamy?”

Tam: “Yeah, look at the date, Polygamy happened afterward.”

Boies: “Who told you that? Where did you get that idea?”

Tam: “It’s the Internet. Another person in the organization found it and he showed it to me. . . . I looked at the document and I thought it was true.”

Prop 8 Advocates Presented Only Two Witnesses And Neither Was Consistent Or Credible

Prop 8 supporters cross-examined these pro-same-sex marriage witnesses extensively but despite the large number of people who had promoted Prop 8, Prop supporters only put up two witnesses to defend the Proposition. With so few, Prop 8 defenders should have realized that they needed to put their best foot forward and present overwhelming evidence. Instead, Prop 8 supporters presented weak witnesses who had previously contradicted the pro-Prop 8 position.

David Blankenhorn, the founder and president of the Institute for American Values think tank, was anticipated to be Prop 8’s star witness. Normally expert witnesses need to “qualify” to testify in that capacity, as the court relies on them heavily when making decisions. In this case, Judge Walker allowed Blankenhorn’s testimony to be heard as an expert despite his lack of academic credentials or research and reserved the right to determine later whether he really qualified as an expert.

Blankenhorn gave contradictory testimony that marriage is a “socially-approved sexual relationship between a man and a woman” with a primary purpose to “regulate filiation”; but he also said that it was a “private adult commitment” between a man and a woman.

Blankenhorn wilted when Boies brought forward evidence that Blankenhorn had previously made written statements that Blankenhorn believed that marriage was important and could even benefit gays and lesbians, their children, and society at large. He also admitted a previous statement that same-sex marriage could lead to less sexual promiscuity. Then Blakenhorn shot Prop 8 advocates in the foot when he said that he still believed his previous statement that, “We would be more American on the day we permit same-sex marriage than the day before.”

In his decision, Judge Walker found Blakenhorn’s testimony was not credible due to his inconsistent statements. After all, which Blankenhorn was he to believe? Judge Walker spends several pages defending his decision not to give Blankenhorn expert status and to dismiss his testimony as not credible.

Prop 8 proponents’ last best hope was Professor Kenneth P. Miller, an expert in American and California politics at Claremont McKenna College. Miller was expected to testify as an expert that gays and lesbians were not really a downtrodden minority and were not harmed by Prop 8’s disparate treatment of opposite-sex and same-sex couples.

Although same-sex marriage advocates objected to his lack of qualifications in the area of same-sex marriage, the court allowed him to testify.

At the trial level, an expert is expected to have a knowledge of materials listed he or she relies on and lists in an “expert report.” Miller testified that his “expertise” in the area was based on materials given to him by the Prop 8 attorneys and that he had only read “most of the materials” and had “tried to review all of them.”

When Miller took the stand, like Blankenhorn, he was trapped by his previous writings that ultimately undermined his argument. In 2001, Miller had written an article in the Santa Clara Law review entitled “Constraining Populism: The Real Challenge of Initiative Reform” in which he wrote that gays and lesbians, like other minorities, are vulnerable and powerless in the initiative process. He also admitted that at least some of those who voted for Prop 8 did so purely out of anti-gay sentiment.

The Decision And Its Aftermath

Given the fact that Judge Walker was dealt this hand, focused same-sex marriage advocates and two scattered Prop 8 witnesses this outcome was inevitable. Had they presented a solid case, some element of bias might be taken into account, but they presented such a sad defense of Prop 8 that a ruling in their favor would have required the judge to admit objective facts that they did not bring forward.

Predictably, despite the inexcusably poor showing by Prop 8, the religious right is painting Judge Walker as an “activist judge” who “ruled from the bench.” We are even seeing arguments that Prop 8 should have never been brought to trial and that the “will of the voters” should have prevailed.

The Prop 8 defense was fundamentally ineffective and was unable to explain why in any way it was necessary to take away same-sex marriage rights in order to protect a compelling state interest. They even failed to demonstrate that there was a rational basis for Prop 8.

Despite the deficit in Prop 8 advocacy, Judge Walker clearly spent a great deal of time considering the matter and writing an airtight decision that will be incredibly difficult to refute on appeal.

The question remains as to whether Prop 8 supporters will cut their losses now and allow California to join a handful of states where gay marriage is legal or whether they will appeal to the Ninth Circuit and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court which could nationalize same-sex marriage.

###

For further reading see:

http://spectrummagazine.org/blog/2009/03/16/raw_majority_power_why_check…

http://spectrummagazine.org/node/1981

Charlotte, NC (WSOC) – A secularist billboard on the Billy Graham Parkway was vandalized over the weekend.The billboard, which was paid for by the The North Carolina Secular Association, shows an American flag and the words “One Nation, Indivisible.”

Over the weekend, someone spray-painted the words “under God” on the billboard.Police were notified and are reviewing surveillance video from a nearby gas station, according to the NC Secular Association.

“This act shows just how needed our message is,” Joseph Stewart, founder of the NC Secular Association, said in a release. “Inserting ‘under God’ on our billboard is like inserting it into the original Pledge in 1954: it divides us as a nation. Our sign doesn’t say ‘One nation under no God’; it is inclusive. It says ‘One Nation Indivisible.’”

CLICK HERE TO SEE A PHOTO AND READ THE FULL ARTICLE: http://www.wsoctv.com/news/24068030/detail.html#

Here is an excerpt:

In reviewing the history of the religion clauses of the Constitution, onecan take two paths. One supports the basic ideal underlying ourconstitutional framework: equality, which is inclusive and is based onrespect for all religious opinions. The other leads to exclusion byadvocating for one or more non-universal religious views. The first reflects the Framers’ goals for guaranteeing liberty to all. The other guarantees liberty only to those who muster the political might to use the state’s machinery to advocate for their religious beliefs. The first exists to protect every individual. The other focuses on the fact that the white, male, property-owning Framers believed in God, and thus concludes thatthe magnificent document they created “permits the disregard” of religious minorities with alternative beliefs.

Why would anyone choose that latter path? Why go out of the way to“permit the disregard” of a minority when such a notion is nowhere to be found within the text of the Constitution, and a historical reading can as readily and more nobly support the equality principle? What sort of American patriot, citizen, or public servant would work towards such an end?”

The entire article, which is well worth reading, is available in PDF format for free download at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1594374 (Click on “One-Click Download” once you follow this link to download the entire document for free.)

ACADEMIC ABSTRACT:

In June 2005, Justice Antonin Scalia contended that ‘the Establishment Clause…permits the disregard of devout atheists.’ This statement is extraordinary inasmuch as it appears to reverse an inexorable (albeit, at times, wandering) trend toward true equality. Thus, where individuals had previously been treated as less than equal on the basis of race (e.g., Dred Scott v. Sandford), gender (e.g., Bradwell v. State) and national origin (e.g., Korematsu v. United States), those odious decisions are no longer good law. In his McCreary dissent, it seems that Justice Scalia sought motion in the opposite direction: toward overturning equality, in the one constitutional arena where the Supreme Court had not previously proclaimed such a manifest animus toward minorities: religion.
This article takes three approaches in considering the Justice’s argument. First, recognizing that Justice Scalia prides himself on being a ‘textualist,’ it considers the Establishment Clause’s text (‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion’). Next, because Justice Scalia, in McCreary, used specific historical events to support his thesis, those events are analyzed to see if they were selected in a fair manner, and if they really stand for the proposition he claims.

Finally, in Part III, Justice Scalia’s brand of analysis is applied to his own Catholicism. It is shown that the United States of America was born of a literal hatred for Catholics, which was pervasive and persistent. One may well conclude, therefore, that under his approach, the Establishment Clause permits the disregard of his own religion.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1594374 (Click on “One-Click Download” once you follow this link to download the entire document.)

ARLP has posted a story on their website along with a video of the keynote address.

Here are some of the reasons for the conference:

Purpose of Conference
The promotion of the first European Free Sunday Alliance by way of a five pronged appeal:

i. The establishment of a common weekly rest day for the improvement of social cohesion through the following: protection of workers’ health, the reconciliation of work and family and the preservation of the life of civil society.

ii. To call upon the Heads of State and Government of the 27 EU Member States, to firmly ‘resist the growing economic pressure to liberalise the laws providing for a work-free Sunday and to commit themselves to safeguard and promote a work-free Sunday as a pillar of the European Social Model within the laws of their respective nations.’

iii. To the European Commission to reinforce the European Social Model by harmonising EU legislation and internal market rules to ‘guarantee the central place of a work-free Sunday in the life of workers and of society and to guarantee that no new pressure is placed on the principle of a work-free Sunday’.

iv. To the Members of the ‘European Parliament to ensure that all relevant EU legislation both respects and promotes the protection of Sunday as a weekly day of rest for all EU citizens’.

v. To all ‘European citizens to sign a future Citizens’ Initiative to be expressed in favour of the protection of a work-free Sunday’.

From Protection of a Work-free Sunday: Call for a Work-Free Sunday booklet, pp. 1-2

The official website for the conference is available here.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State today praised Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens for his record of support for church-state separation and expressed the hope that his replacement will hold similar views.

Stevens, the oldest member of the court, announced this morning that he will retire at the end of this term. President Barack Obama is expected to soon reveal his choice to replace Stevens.

“Justice Stevens is an icon — a thoughtful, perceptive justice who understands the role of church-state separation in American life,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “It is vitally important that President Obama choose a high court nominee who understands that government may not meddle in matters of religion.

“The high court is deeply divided on church-state issues,” Lynn continued. “It is imperative that Stevens’ replacement be someone who understands and upholds the constitutional mandate of church-state separation.”

Lynn pointed out that Stevens voted consistently against efforts to interject religion into public schools and to funnel tax aid to sectarian schools. He opposed government display of sectarian symbols on public property. At the same time, he was an ardent supporter of the free exercise of religion.

In 2002, Stevens issued a strong dissent from the high court’s ruling upholding voucher subsidies for private schools in Cleveland, noting that most of the public funds went to religious institutions. (Zelman v. Simmons-Harris)

“Whenever we remove a brick from the wall that was designed to separate religion and government, we increase the risk of religious strife and weaken the foundations of our democracy,” Stevens wrote.

Lynn said Americans United will closely monitor the nomination process to ensure that Stevens’ replacement has the same regard for church-state separation.

Appointed by President Gerald R. Ford, Stevens has served on the Supreme Court since 1975.

Americans United is a religious liberty watchdog group based in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1947, the organization educates Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom.

WASHINGTON (ABP) — With the Supreme Court’s oldest and longest-serving member announcing April 9 his retirement, advocates for strong church-state separation urged that Justice John Paul Stevens’ replacement be as devoted to preventing government establishment of religion as the retiring jurist.

However, some called for a successor who can improve on what they view as Stevens’ mixed record when it comes to enforcing the other half of the First Amendment’s religion clauses — protecting the free exercise of faith.

“Justice Stevens is an icon — a thoughtful, perceptive justice who understands the role of church-state separation in American life,” said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in a press release. “It is vitally important that President Obama choose a high-court nominee who understands that government may not meddle in matters of religion.”

Read the full article:  http://www.abpnews.com/content/view/5032/53/

By Ellen G. White – The Great Controversy pp. 293-298

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Eleven years after the planting of the first colony, Roger Williams came to the new World. Like the early Pilgrims, he came to enjoy religious freedom; but unlike them, he saw what so few in his time had yet seen—that this freedom was the inalienable right of all, whatever might be their creed. He was an earnest seeker for truth, with Robinson holding it impossible that all the light from God’s word had yet been received. Williams “was the first person in modern Christendom to establish civil government on the doctrine of the liberty of conscience, the equality of opinions before the law.” He declared it to be the duty of the magistrate to restrain crime, but never to control the conscience. “The public or the magistrates may decide,” he said, “what is due from man to man; but when they attempt to prescribe a man’s duties to God, they are out of place, and there can be no safety; for it is clear that if the magistrate has the power, he may decree one set of opinions or beliefs today and another tomorrow; as had been done in England by different kings and queens, and by different popes and councils in the Roman Church; so that belief would become a heap of confusion.”

Attendance at the services of the established church was required under a penalty of fine or imprisonment. “William’s reprobated the law; the worst statute in the English code was that which did but enforce attendance upon the parish church. To compel men to unite with those of a different creed, he regarded as an open violation of their natural rights; to drag to public worship the irreligious and the unwilling, seemed only like requiring hypocrisy. . . . ‘No one should be bound to worship, or,’ he added, ‘to maintain a worship, against his own consent.’ ‘What!’ exclaimed his antagonists, amazed at his tenets, ‘is not the laborer worthy of his hire?’ ‘Yes,’ replied he, ‘from them that hire him.’”

Roger Williams was respected and beloved as a faithful minister, a man of rare gifts, of unbending integrity and true benevolence; yet his steadfast denial of the right of civil magistrates to authority over the church, and his demand for religious liberty, could not be tolerated. The application of this new doctrine, it was urged, would “subvert the fundamental state and government of the country.” He was sentenced to banishment from the colonies, and finally, to avoid arrest, he was forced to flee, amid the cold and storms of winter, into the unbroken forest.

“For fourteen weeks,” he says, “I was sorely tossed in a bitter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean.” But “the ravens fed me in the wilderness,” and a hollow tree often served him for a shelter. Thus he continued his painful flight through the snow and the trackless forest, until he found refuge with an Indian tribe whose confidence and affection he had won while endeavoring to teach them the truths of the gospel.

Making his way at last, after months of change and wandering, to the shores of Narragansett Bay, he there laid the foundation of the first state of modern times that in the fullest sense recognized the right of religious freedom. The fundamental principle of Roger Williams’s colony, was “that every man should have liberty to worship God according to the light of his own conscience.” His little state, Rhode Island, became the asylum of the oppressed, and it increased and prospered until its foundation principles—civil and religious liberty—became the cornerstone of the American Republic.

In that grand old document which our forefathers set forth as their bill of rights—the Declaration of Independence—they declared: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And the Constitution guarantees, in the most explicit terms, the inviolability of conscience: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office of public trust under the United States.” “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

“The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle that man’s relation with his God is above human legislation, and his rights of conscience inalienable.

“The framers of the Constitution recognized the eternal principle that man’s relation with his God is above human legislation, and his rights of conscience inalienable. Reasoning was not necessary to establish this truth; we are conscious of it in our own bosoms. It is this consciousness which, in defiance of human laws, has sustained so many martyrs in tortures and flames. They felt that their duty to God was superior to human enactments, and that man could exercise no authority over their consciences. It is an inborn principle which nothing can eradicate.”

As the tidings spread through the countries of Europe, of a land where every man might enjoy the fruit of his own labor and obey the convictions of his conscience, thousands flocked to the shores of the New World, Colonies rapidly multiplied. “Massachusetts, by special law, offered free welcome and aid, at the public cost, to Christians of any nationality who might fly beyond the Atlantic ‘to escape from wars or famine, or the oppression of their persecutors.’ Thus the fugitive and the downtrodden were, by statute, made the guests of the commonwealth.” In twenty years from the first landing at Plymouth, as many thousand Pilgrims were settled in New England.

To secure the object which they sought, “they were content to earn a bare subsistence by a life of frugality and toil. They asked nothing from the soil but the reasonable returns of their own labor. No golden vision threw a deceitful halo around their path. . . . They were content with the slow but steady progress of their social polity. They patiently endured the privations of the wilderness, watering the tree of liberty with their tears, and with the sweat of their brow, till it took deep root in the land.”

The Bible was held as the foundation of faith, the source of wisdom, and the charter of liberty. Its principles were diligently taught in the home, in the school, and in the church, and its fruits were manifest in thrift, intelligence, purity, and temperance. One might be for years a dweller in the Puritan settlements, “and not see a drunkard, or hear an oath, or meet a beggar.” It was demonstrated that the principles of the Bible are the surest safeguards of national greatness. The feeble and isolated colonies grew to a confederation of powerful States, and the world marked with wonder the peace and prosperity of “a church without a pope, and a state without a king.”

But continually increasing numbers were attracted to the shores of America, actuated by motives widely different from those of the first Pilgrims. Though the primitive faith and purity exerted a widespread and moulding power, yet its influence became less and less as the numbers increased of those who sought only worldly advantage.

The regulation adopted by the early colonists, of permitting only members of the church to vote or to hold office in the civil government, led to most pernicious results. This measure had been accepted as a means of preserving the purity of the state, but it resulted in the corruption of the church. A profession of religion being the condition of suffrage and office holding, many, actuated solely by motives of worldly policy, united with the church without a change of heart. Thus the churches came to consist, to a considerable extent, of unconverted persons; and even in the ministry were those who not only held errors of doctrine, but who were ignorant of the renewing power of the Holy Spirit. Thus again was demonstrated the evil results, so often witnessed in the history of the church from the days of Constantine to the present, of attempting to build up the church by the aid of the state, of appealing to the secular power in support of the gospel of Him who declared, “My kingdom is not of this world.” The union of the church with the state, be the degree never so slight, while it may appear to bring the world nearer to the church, does in reality but bring the church nearer to the world.

The union of the church with the state, be the degree never so slight, while it may appear to bring the world nearer to the church, does in reality but bring the church nearer to the world.

The great principle so nobly advocated by Robinson and Roger Williams, that truth is progressive, that Christians should stand ready to accept all the light which may shine from God’s holy Word, was lost sight of by their descendants. The Protestant churches of America and those of Europe as well—so highly favored in receiving the blessings of the Reformation, failed to press forward in the path of reform. Though a few faithful men arose, from time to time, to proclaim new truth and expose long cherished error, the majority, like the Jews in Christ’s day or the papists in the time of Luther, were content to believe as their fathers had believed, and to live as they had lived. Therefore religion again degenerated into formalism; and errors and superstitions which would have been cast aside had the church continued to walk in the light of God’s word, were retained and cherished. Thus the spirit inspired by the Reformation gradually died out, until there was almost as great need of reform in the Protestant churches as in the Roman Church in the time of Luther. There was the same worldliness and spiritual stupor, a similar reverence for the opinions of men, and substitution of human theories for the teachings of God’s word.

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EXCERPT:

The Sunday shopping ban in New Jersey’s largest county — among the nation’s last remaining blue laws — may be lifted to satisfy the state’s hunger for more sales tax revenue. The budget proposed last week by new Republican Gov. Chris Christie assumes $65 million in new sales tax revenue by jettisoning the law starting July 1.

While some people may see Bergen County’s blue law as antiquated, many residents view it as quaint and don’t want to lose it.

“Sundays in this town are wonderful,” said Carl Shaw, a 56-year-old Bergen County native who owns Norton Paints in Paramus, which is closed on Sundays by law. “To the people who say ‘I need it now,’ I say ‘Plan ahead or come Saturday or Monday.’”

The few remaining blue laws are mostly in the South and Midwest and mostly limit liquor or car sales on Sundays, said Jacqueline Byers, research director at the National Association of Counties.

Read the full article at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_blue_law_nj

RELATED STORIES:

Should State Force Bergen County to get rid of “Blue” laws?
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That’s because Bergen County — one of the country’s richest retail areas with its five shopping malls and 900000 residents — still enforces “blue laws” that…

‘The Sabbath World: Glimpses of a Different Order of Time’ by Judith Shulevitz
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Bergen NOW, on Mon, 29 Mar 2010 07:54:23 -0700

KEEP THE BLUE LAWS! AM: i worked for years in Retail.So keep the blue laws.Because It supposed to on Sundays for prayer?right!! GA: TO ALL OF YOU THAT VOTED …

Writing for the majority, Judge Carlos Bea wrote, ““The Pledge of Allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded.”

In Newdow v. Rio Linda Union School District, 05-17257, the court found 2-1 that teachers leading students to recite the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance did not amount to a religious exercise, but rather was one of the “historical and religious traditions of our country, not a personal affirmation through prayer or invocation that the speaker believes in God.”  The court also took into consideration the fact that students could opt out of saying the Pledge on religious grounds, and stated that Newdow did not have standing to pursue the claim as the Pledge was “voluntary.”  The phrase “under God” was added to the Pledge in 1954.

This time, Judge Bea wrote that Education Code Sec. 57520, which requires each school to conduct “patriotic exercises daily” expresses a secular purpose and does not mandate the text of the pledge or any other patriotic exercise.  Judge Stephen Reinhardt dissented, writing that, “The undeniably religious purpose of the ‘under God’ amendment to the Pledge and the inherently coercive nature of its teacher-led daily recitation in public schools ought to be sufficient under any Establishment Clause analysis to vindicate [the plaintiffs’] constitutional claim, and to require that the Pledge of Allegiance, when recited as part of a daily state-directed, teacher-led program, be performed in its original, pre-amendment secular incarnation that served us so well for generations,” he wrote.

Standing to challenge the Pledge was important in this case because in 2005, Newdow had previously won at the 9th Circuit, but the Supreme Court had ruled that Newdow could not pursue the case because he had pursued the case on behalf of his daughter and did not have custody.  The U.S. Supreme Court had not decided the merits of the Pledge itself.

Separately, in Newdow v. LeFevre, 06-16344, the court ruled 3-0 that although Newdow did have challenge to sue since he came into contact with coins and paper currency on a daily basis.  As this case was decided after the “Pledge” case (Rio Lindo), Judge Reinhardt voted with the majority as he felt required to do so by “precedent” but confirmed again that he believed the majority in Rio Lindo had ruled erroneously.

From this author’s perspective, the 9th Circuit’s ruling appears to be consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Marsh v. Chambers (1983) which found that traditional notions of separation of church and state are not violated if there is a long-standing history of the practice and it is more symbolic than religiously meaningful. In Marsh, Nebraska state senator Ernie Chambers had sued in federal court, claiming that the legislature’s practice of opening sessions with prayer violated the separation of church and state.  The 8th Circuit had looked at the issue and decided that it did technically violate the First Amendment, but the Supreme Court found that it was indeed constitutional, essentially because it was form, not substance.

While I think Dr. Newdow may have been technically correct in this case, the use of the word “God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and on U.S. Currency is a politically charged issue. It has historically been a non-issue for most Americans, but if it were removed by a Supreme Court decision, there would be riots in the streets railing against “activist judges” even if they technically made the correct decision.  Most people do not understand the legal basis and operation of the First Amendment, and the backlash against the Courts and the resulting legislative and constitutional changes could outweigh the small degree of harm caused by the usage of these symbols.

If these cases proceed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court will likely find a way to keep them legal, and might even write a broader decision than Marsh which could extend to more areas of civic religion.  From a religious perspective, it is discomfiting, but legally necessary, that the court deny that the use of phrases has any true religious meaning in order for it to remain. So, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t keeping God’s name in the Pledge and on money under the condition that it is permissible only as long as it is meaningless implicate the 3rd Commandment which specifically states, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who taketh His name in vain” (Exodus 20:7)?

Shawn Boonstra, the speaker and director of It is Written, in his sermon on the 3rd Commandment, describes intent of the commandment as follows:

“The Hebrew word for ‘vain’ in this commandment basically means ‘nothingness,’ ‘vanity,’ ‘emptiness’ or ‘worthless.’ What it’s saying is that you shouldn’t take God’s name in a worthless way. Don’t use God’s name, don’t profess God’s name as if it means nothing. Don’t claim to be a follower of God unless you live like a follower of God. Don’t go around using the name of God and all that it entails unless you’re going to live like you mean it. Don’t cover your personal sins in the name of a God who never, ever sanctions your sins. Don’t defile the name of the Lord. In short, don’t be a religious hypocrite.”

I don’t know if Shawn Boonstra would agree, but it is ironic that although this was a lawsuit brought by an atheist, had he won and the phrases been struck, the result might have actually been more protective of the honor of God.  After these rulings stripping the name of God of any religious meaning, those who have so long clamored for God’s name to be mentioned as a civic symbol might want to re-think their position.

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EXCERPT:

“The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.” Everson v. Bd. of Educ., 330 U.S. 1, 18 (1947). The interplay between the First Amendment’s Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses creates an exception to an otherwise fully applicable statute if the statute would interfere with a religious organization’s employment decisions regarding its ministers. Bollard v. Cal. Province of the Soc’y of Jesus, 196 F.3d 940, 944, 946-47 (9th Cir. 1999). This “ministerial exception” helps to preserve the wall between church and state from even the mundane government intrusion presented here. In this case, plaintiff Cesar Rosas seeks pay for the overtime hours he worked as a seminarian in a Catholic church in Washington. The district court correctly determined that the ministerial exception bars Rosas’s claim and dismissed the case on the pleadings. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291, and we affirm.

Cesar Rosas and Jesus Alcazar were Catholic seminarians in Mexico. The Catholic Church required them to participate in a ministry training program at St. Mary Catholic Church in Marysville, Washington as their next step in becoming ordained priests. At St. Mary, Rosas and Alcazar allegedly suffered retaliation for claiming that Father Yanez sexually harassed Alcazar, and they eventually sued Father Yanez and the Corporation of the Catholic Archbishop of Seattle (“defendants”) under Title VII. In addition, Rosas and Alcazar sued under supplemental jurisdiction for violations of Washington’s Minimum Wage Act for failure to pay overtime wages. See Wash. Rev. Code § 49.46.130. The district court dismissed the overtime wage claims on the pleadings, see Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(c), and Rosas’s overtime wage claim is the only issue on appeal.

Because the judgment was on the pleadings, the pleadings alone must be sufficient to support the district court’s judgment. We thus base our decision on the very few allegations in Rosas’s complaint. Rosas alleges as follows:

1.3 . . . The Corporation of the Catholic Archbishop of Seattle hosted [Rosas] as [a] participant[ ] in a training/pastoral ministry program for the priesthood. 2.2 Cesar Rosas entered the seminary to become a Catholic priest in 1995 in Mexico.

2.3 As part of [his] preparation for ordination into the priesthood, the Catholic Church required [Rosas] to engage in a ministerial placement outside [his] diocese, under the supervision of a pastor of the parish into which [he was] placed. The Archdiocese of Seattle sends seminarians to Mexico and has Mexican seminarians come to its parishes. [Rosas was] placed in St. Mary Parish in Marysville, Washington under the supervision of defendant Fr. Horatio Yanez.

2.10 . . . [Rosas] was hired to do maintenance of the church and also assisted with Mass. He . . . worked many overtime hours he was not compensated for.

Read the full decision which includes a primer on the ‘ministerial exception’ at http://www.metnews.com/sos.cgi?0310%2F09-35003

AUSTIN – Republicans on the State Board of Education soundly rejected a Democratic-backed proposal Thursday that would have required Texas students to be taught the reasons behind the prohibition of a state religion in the Bill of Rights.

The contentious decision in curriculum standards for U.S. government classes appeared to signal the unhappiness of several board members with court rulings that have affirmed the separation of church and state – including a longtime ban on school-sponsored prayer.

Read the full article at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/031210dnmetsboe.19ab856dd.html

By Michael D. Peabody, Esq.

So what’s the biggest threat to religious liberty? According to J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the answer is found in the strings attached to government funding of religious activity.  Earlier this month, during a speech for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, Walker said, “What the government funds, it always regulates. Government-sponsored religion is always bad for religion. How can we raise a prophetic fist with one hand and take government money with the other?”

The truth of Walker’s statement was underscored just last week when the Washington State House of Representatives passed HB 1329, now working its way through the state Senate, that cleared the way for unionization of private and most non-profit child care centers if they take government subsidies for as little as one child, and even declares the centers’ employees “government employees” for the purposes of unionization.

In fact, HB 1329 openly declares that “child care center directors” and “workers” are “public employees” for the purposes of collective bargaining, if at least one child attending the center received government subsidies.  It further declared that “solely for the purposes of collective bargaining, the Governor is the ‘public employer.’”

There is an exemption for large non-profits with more than 200 regional affiliates or that send more than $3,000,000 in “membership dues” to a national organization.  The term “regional affiliates” is not defined although it is believed to primarily be aimed at large organizations such as the YWCA.  Large churches might be able to escape through this loophole if they can claim that the local congregations count toward the total of “regional affiliates” and that money sent to the national organization counts toward membership dues, but that will not be an easy argument for most churches that happen to run child care centers to win.

The House analysis claims that the bill would allow private child care centers to continue to have the right to “chose, direct, and terminate” child care workers. However this is boilerplate language for most contracts between employers and employees and it is easy to foresee scenarios in which religious child care organizations would be required to work their way through the union grievance process and defend their religiously-based decisions to a non-religious entity.  How can a religious child care center fulfill its faith-based mission when it has to answer to a secular labor union?

At a time when child care is expensive and parents are having to work longer hours to make ends meet, religious child care centers that have accepted subsidized children are in a particularly precarious position.  Local child care centers are generally small, mission-focused organizations with little money to defend themselves at the legislature. Sponsors of HB 1329, including the labor unions, are banking on this government dependence to generate pressure to dive into the non-profit sector and take over religious employers.  In this case, the labor unions are on the verge of taking over an entire industry.

There are Federal laws which might pre-empt this legislation, or as an alternative, a basis for non-profit exclusion, as well as U.S. Constitutional considerations, but it could be years before these issues could be sorted out by the courts.  In the meantime, if HB 1329 passes in its current form, and barring any court orders stopping it from going into effect, religious child care centers might either have to accept unionization or close their doors.

While there are many good reasons why government funding is necessary, and it is not at all certain that HB 1329 will become law, I would not be surprised to see similar legislation cropping up in more states as labor unions take advantage of government strings to try to control the elusive non-profit sector.

More on government funding to come in a future newsletter.

For more information about HB 1329:

• Read the House Bill Analysis at:http://apps.leg.wa.gov/documents/billdocs/2009-10/Pdf/Bill%20Reports/House/1329%20HBA%20CL%2009.pdf

• You can track HB 1329 and read legislative summaries and materials athttp://apps.leg.wa.gov/billinfo/Summary.aspx?bill=1329&year=2009
• Also, be sure to read NRLA President Greg Hamilton’s testimony, in opposition to HB 1329, that he presented before the Washington Senate’s Labor, Commerce, and Consumer Protection Committee on February 18, 2010 athttp://www.npuc.org/site/1/docs/HB_1329_Senate_Testimony_2-18-10.pdf

As if there weren’t enough instances where the American Empire is associated with the faith of Jesus (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for starters) another sad story has leaked into the media (see ABC story here), this time about Bible verses being inscribed on the sights of high-powered military-issued rifles. Yes, you read that correctly.

The Michigan company, Trijicon, which has been awarded with Pentagon contracts in the hundreds of millions of dollars, produces the rifle sights with Bible verse references stamped on them, and they stand by the practice–largely without challenge from the Christian community.

Company spokespersons have defended the practice; however, the ABC expose did not ask them about the shocking irony of putting Bible references from Jesus who preached non-violence on a weapon whose sole purpose it is to maim and kill those who Christ commanded us to love and serve. Unfortunately, ABC is left to do the job of exposing this, as there have not been Christian voices speaking against this practice, even though it tragically provides a Christian veneer for the aggressive, imperial violence that is taking place overseas.

The media rightly focuses on the unconstitutional nature of the practice of stamping Bible messages on state-issued weapons. Indeed this is a clear violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment–the state should not be supporting a religion. Also, ABC reports on the concerns that if America’s wars are soaked in Christian language, then the Islamic world will perceive the wars as religious crusades.

These are very real and pertinent concerns. However, the focus on the constitutionality of the practice and the concern about enraging an Islamic enemy misses the point and dodges the most insidious aspect of the scandal.

The biggest problem with this–from a Christian point of view–is that it misrepresents Jesus. Where Christ should be preached from a posture of loving servitude, through this practice his name is being associated with warfare and killing. Where his Kingdom of love is supposed to transcend human governments, the U.S. government is once again baptized as the march of God on earth. It’s time for Trijicon to remove the Bible verses from the rifle sights. I humbly ask them to please reconsider the kind of distorted picture of God they are painting for the world. Does Jesus, who called on his followers to love their enemies, really sanction the military occupation of Afghanistan?

One former Air Force officer tells of soldiers who’ve blown the whistle on their commanders who have called the weapons “spiritually transformed firearm[s] of Jesus Christ.” What a sad view of Christianity that is being presented to the world. Firearms of Jesus Christ? Jesus is the one who told Peter to put his sword back in its place, and whose sacrificial death has inspired countless non-violent martyrs to do the same. High-powered military arms are in no way “of Jesus Christ.” Stamping a Bible verse on an instrument of gruesome death and destruction does not make it “spiritually transformed.”

I hope that Christian leaders speak against this practice, as it represents just another form of legitimizing the Empire under the cloak of pseudo-Christian trappings.

I pray that Christians would show the light of truth to the world that God is a God of love, and that he calls his children to live in a way that is best for them–in non-violence, non-coercion, peace, servitude, and love.

A video describing some of the religious and secular rationale behind American Sunday blue laws.

Ever since President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court, the chattering classes have speculated endlessly regarding the impact she might have on the future of American jurisprudence.  She would bring wide-ranging experiences to the Court: prosecutor, civil litigator, federal trial judge, federal appellate judge, law school instructor, and Hispanic woman.  While not a Horatio Alger rags-to-riches success story, she comes pretty close.

As only the second Hispanic named to the Court, her views on race and ethnicity have naturally been of great interest to Court watchers, litigators, and the so-called fourth estate. In fact, for a time her “wise Latina” comments and the president’s equally controversial “empathy standard” were unwelcome distractions and fodder for sharp criticism. But the threatened firestorm turned out to be more a tempest in a teapot, and during the Senate confirmation hearings she conducted herself with aplomb, charm, and dignity, demonstrating not just a nuanced and sophisticated comprehension of the law but a judicial demeanor and temperament to be expected of one enrobed in the marble edifice at the entrance of which bears the inscription “Equal Justice Under Law.”

At the age of 55, she could potentially serve until 2044, should she serve as long as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (who served on the Court until the age of 90). Her relative youth, then, is one of the positive considerations that no doubt influenced her nomination.

Perhaps of somewhat lesser public interest, but of no less public importance, are Sotomayor’s views regarding the Constitution’s provisions generally and the safeguards concerning religious liberty specifically. Appellate judges exercise discretion in interpreting the U.S. Constitution, but are necessarily constrained by the binding precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court. Since 1803 the judiciary has had final legal interpretive authority within our nation¹s system of government and the Supreme Court has reigned supreme over all courts regarding the laws of the land. As Chief Justice Marshall opined in Marbury v. Madison: “It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.”

Three provisions in the U.S. Constitution expressly reference religion, effectively presenting a triptych showcasing the New World’s commitment to freedom of conscience. One is in Article VI, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, which provides in pertinent part that “. . . no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” While age and residency requirements may be prescribed for would-be officeholders, this “no religious test” clause clearly proscribes any religious criterion being applied. (In some jurisdictions in colonial America public office holders had to be of the Protestant faith.)

The other two religion provisions are situated in the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” This pair of clauses (free exercise clause and establishment clause) proved fertile soil from which has grown the vast body of intricate, if not convoluted, case law concerning religious liberty.

While Sotomayor’s past judicial experience never afforded her the opportunity to opine on the Article VI, Section 3 prohibition against religious tests for officeholders, she has adjudicated cases pertaining to the other two provisions.

A quartet of cases gives voice to her views regarding the religion clauses. Ford v. McGinnis, for example, involved an inmate in a state correctional facility who requested to be served an Eid ul Fitr meal for observance of the Muslim Festival of Breaking the Fast. He wanted to participate in the daylong celebration at the conclusion of Ramadan, which is a holy month of fasting and prayer for Muslims. The prisoner had to be transferred from Rikers Island to the Downstate Correctional Facility for a court appearance on January 7, 2000, which was the very day for partaking of the Eid ul Fitr meal and so was unable to participate at the prescribed time.

Prison officials learned that most Muslims would not observe the feast at a time other than at the appointed time, and so they informed the inmate that no such makeup feast would take place given the generally accepted dictates of Islam. The prisoner in question begged to differ and filed a lawsuit.

The timing of the suit may not have been ideal for the litigant, who filed after the Religious Freedom Restoration Act had been invalidated by the Supreme Court (at least to the extent that it applied to the states) but before the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act was passed by Congress. It afforded, however, the appellate court the occasion to decide the issue squarely on the Constitution, not on interpretations of federal statutes.

A federal trial court had affirmed the decision of the prison not to serve the meal at all since by conventional Muslim standards it would have been too late. By the time Sotomayor heard the case, she was a federal appellate judge serving on the Second Circuit. Writing for the panel, she opined that the appellate court would decline to assess the “objective reasonableness of the prisoner’s belief” and would ask rather the more focused and individualized questions of whether “a claimant sincerely holds a particular belief and whether the belief is religious in nature.”

This was because judges, though learned in the law, did not have the “aptitude to pass upon the question of whether particular religious beliefs are wrong or right.” The decision served a didactic purpose, signaling that courts would look to the sincerely held beliefs of the individual adherent party to the litigation, not solely to whether the belief was an official creed or a “tenet or dogma of an established religious sect.” No group would determine for the individual what the individual in question believed.

Not a favorite of correctional facility wardens, the case made clear that the Constitution’s guarantees afforded substantive rights, not easily dismissed, and certainly not diminished due to the idiosyncratic religious beliefs of the individual asserting the rights.

The case of Flamer v. City of  White Plains was a suit by Rabbi Reuven Flamer, a Hasidic Lubavitcher Jew, who requested to erect a menorah, a nine-pronged candelabrum, in a city park. He was precluded from so doing by a city council resolution, supported by Reform Jews, prohibiting fixed outdoor displays of religious or political symbols in government parks. The rabbi asserted his constitutional rights to free exercise of religion and to free speech and argued that the city resolution was unconstitutional.

Sotomayor, then serving as a federal trial judge, struck down the resolution as an unconstitutional content-based regulation of speech. A hybrid case involving two First Amendment protections (speech and religion), Flamer is seen as a victory for proponents of unfettered religious speech. Why should religious speech be accorded less protection than secular speech? After all, freedom of religion is expressly protected and, therefore, religious speech should for that very reason be accorded more, rather than less, protection.

At the same time, however, there are those of a sincerely religious orientation who equally revere the Constitution who are less than completely comfortable with the decision. For them, the Constitution precludes use of government property for such religious expression. The establishment clause is not just about disestablishing churches but about preventing the perception of government endorsement of a particular faith. The case is not just a skirmish between conservative Hasidic Lubavitcher Jews and progressive Reform Jews; it also reveals the inherent tensions between the establishment clause and free exercise clause.

Judge Sotomayor, with the deft hand of a judicial maven, identified the relevant facts and applied the legal precedent. After describing the distinctions between a traditional public forum, a nonpublic forum, and a designated public forum, she permitted the expressive action of erecting the menorah, vindicating the right to religious speech in a forum in which no one would mistake the menorah for government speech. No doubt the case would have been decided the same way whether the display entailed the Ten Commandments, a crescent, or a crèche.

Campos v. Coughlin is a third case that can serve as a window on Sotomayor¹s approach to religious freedom issues. Campos also involved incarcerated individuals, self-described adherents of the Santeria religion, though some had previously identified themselves as Christians. What makes this case interesting was not just that the believers were prisoners or that they insisted that they had a right to wear multiple strands of beads; it is important because while such a devotional practice may have been officially optional for Santeria practitioners, it was not optional to the petitioners in question. If the state denied their request for accommodation, the denial could, in their minds, “result in negative and possibly irreversible life consequences for the practitioner.”

In deciding the case Judge Sotomayor upheld their claim, holding that an accommodation was constitutionally required. State corrections administrators, while ever mindful of prison safety and security concerns, were no less responsible as government actors for complying with the constitutional right to the free exercise of religion. The right is not absolute and admits of caveats, qualifications, and limitations. But on balance the religious freedoms guaranteed to the prisoners outweighed concerns that the beads might identify prison gang membership (a genuine, nontrivial concern of the warden).

Hankins v. Lyght was a case in which an elderly Protestant minister filed suit against his denomination’s implementation of mandatory age-based retirement. Though he loved his church, he hated what in his mind was its thinly veiled ageism. In this case Judge Sotomayor parted company with the majority and filed a dissent.

She argued that the federal age discrimination in employment statute was inapplicable to a church’s hiring, retention, and employment practices, for to hold otherwise would unduly intrude into matters (of faith) regarding which courts had no competence. Court involvement in a church¹s mandatory retirement dispute would be to trespass on “spiritually intimate grounds of a religious community’s existence.”

With due deference to applicable precedent, she explained her reasons for dissenting. One might infer from her dissenting opinion a profound respect for religious institutions and their faith-informed internal operations. The right to believe belongs not just to an individual but to an aggregate of individuals, and government should studiously avoid becoming embroiled in internecine struggles over religious questions between believers and their communities.

These four cases stand for the constancy of the Constitution. They reveal Sotomayor’s judicial leitmotif of upholding constitutional rights not just in trouble-free circumstances but even under challenging conditions. The Constitution guides the ship of state not just in tranquil waters but even, and perhaps especially, in the Sturm und Drang of the perfect legal storm.

While it might be an exaggeration to call her opinions illuminating, learned, and lucid, it’s not much of an exaggeration. Her published opinions exhibit the painstaking and proficient habits of a judge who is fairly even-tempered, passionate about being dispassionate, and decidedly mainstream. She is not, at least on the religion clauses, an ideologue with a doctrinal ax to grind. Her opinions avoid courting the avant-garde; instead, they are closely reasoned and meticulously written with the fidelity to statutes and studious attention to precedent expected of a neutral adjudicator. Noncontroversial is an apt description of her judicial oeuvre‹and perhaps this is precisely what the president wanted.

These are not the only opinions that evince recently confirmed Justice Sotomayor’s religious liberty jurisprudence. Professor Howard M. Friedman has compiled an extensive list of Sotomayor’s rulings on religion clause issues at his blog, Religion Clause.

Some groups criticize Sotomayor’s jurisprudence as being merely comme ci, comme ça (so-so) or rather moderately tolerable. Others find her to be―for good or for ill―a rather “strict church-state separationist.” Still others laud her as a brilliant jurist.

According to the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, an organization noted for its strict church-state separation, Sotomayor upholds religious “free exercise―even in difficult settings such as prisons and in cases where the religious practices of plaintiffs are unfamiliar,” and “where the governing case law was not settled, she accurately predicted the Supreme Court’s eventual resolution.”

Dan Gilgoff, writing in his God & Country blog for U.S. News and World Report, found Sotomayor’s religion clause cases so middle-of-the-road that he predicted the White House might even focus on them to garner support among religious conservatives.

The American Center for Law and Justice, a traditional values counterpart to the liberal ACLU, doubtless would have preferred a nominee more in the conservative mold of Justice Scalia. But its decision not to actively oppose Sotomayor’s confirmation and to rather generically indicate that it “stands firmly behind the appointment of judges who will interpret the law, rather than legislate policy” is telling.

While the U.S. Senate fully inquired into Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy, one thing it properly declined to do was inquire into “her own religious faith.” While it is common knowledge that she is a practicing Catholic Christian (and will constitute the sixth Catholic on the nine-member Court), her prayers, devotional practices, and personal theology are not pertinent to her qualifications for the U.S. Supreme Court. Such a line of questioning could be tantamount to a violation of the “no religious test” provision of the Constitution.

In conclusion, if Justice Sotomayor’s past writings are any indication, her future religion clause opinions should please First Amendment advocates, especially those for whom religious liberty is vital.
 

David A. Pendleton, a former legislator, adjudicates workers compensation appeals in Honolulu, Hawaii.

 Although ReligiousLiberty.TV is not affiliated with Liberty Magazine, we strongly support the magazine and are pleased that the magazine and the author have granted us permission to repost this informative article about the views of the newest Justice on the United States Supreme Court on the intersection of church and state.  If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing (it is only $7.95 a year) or contributing to further the mission of the magazine.  RLTV Editor

EXCERPT:

CALGARY, December 7, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Gerald Chipeur, the lawyer who represented Pastor Stephen Boissoin, has said that the recent ruling in favor of Mr. Boissoin “will have a significant long term positive impact on religious freedom in Canada.”

Pastor Boissoin was exonerated by a Court of Queen’s Bench judge last week after being subjected to the proceedings of the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal for over seven years. The Tribunal had found Boissoin guilty of “hate speech” for having written a letter to the editor of a local newspaper about the homosexualist agenda.

But Justice Earl C. Wilson last week ruled the letter Mr. Boissoin wrote to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate on June 17, 2002 on the subject of homosexual-rights curricula in the province’s educational system was not a hate crime but legitimate expression allowed under freedom of speech.

“The decision of Justice Earl Wilson of the Court of Queen’s Bench in Boissoin v Lund will have a significant long term positive impact on religious freedom in Canada,” Gerald Chipeur wrote in a summary analysis of the judgment, forwarded to LifeSiteNews.com by Boissoin.

Chipeur states that the bar has been raised substantially on what may in the future be construed as a violation of the “hate” provisions of human rights laws. “The decision established a very high threshold for the conclusion that a publication is in violation of the ‘hate’ provisions of Alberta’s human rights laws,” he said.

Read the full piece at http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/dec/09120706.html

EXCERPT:

According to the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel, a Berlin city official said at a neighborhood meeting on Wednesday that the city had reviewed existing laws and determined there was nothing they could do to prevent the center’s marketing activities.

“In our view, this is a business activity,” Marc Schulte, the city district’s economic advisor, told the paper.

 But this also means that business restrictions apply to Scientology, including the federal law banning sales on Sunday. Any normal church is free to sell postcards, books or any other educational or fundraising goods on that day, but the Church of Scientology will be banned from offering courses or selling any goods on Sundays. City officials have said they will strictly observe the Scientologists to make sure they follow the rule of law.

Read the full article at http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,462439,00.html