Ken at Popehat has picked up primary documents in the case of the lawsuit filed by Beaverton Grace Bible Church of Beaverton, Ore. against a “former parishioner and her family members for negative online reviews.” Earlier here.
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Among issues in the suit: whether terms like “creepy,” “cult,” “control tactics,” and “spiritual abuse” are defamatory. [Anita Kissee, KATU]
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“…your heart will lift up, unless you are the noise nuisance officer of North Somerset….For the time being, the chimes of Wrington have been silenced,” owing to a noise complaint lodged by a weekending Londoner. [A.N. Wilson, The Independent]
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“[Glenn] Richter has been collecting food from places like the Ohav Zedek synagogue and bringing it to homeless shelters for more than 20 years, but recently his donation, including a ‘cholent‘ or carrot stew, was turned away because the Bloomberg administration wants to monitor the salt, fat and fiber eaten by the homeless. … Richter said that over the years he’s delivered more than two tons of food to the homeless.” The NYC mayor says he’s not planning to reconsider the recently adopted policy. [CBS-NY] Earlier here (Connecticut), here (N.J.: “retail food establishment”), here, etc.
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“A retired semi-professional footballer who claims his faith ruined his chances of playing for Manchester United is suing the Baptist Church for £10 million.” Arquimedes Nganga “quit the sport aged 25 when he converted to the Baptist faith. He said: ‘I could definitely have had a long career in the Premiership’” had he not given it up. [Evening Standard]
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- Ray LaHood’s forgotten predecessor: “How One Bureaucrat Almost Succeeded in Banning Car Radios” [Mike Riggs, Reason]
- “Some Recent Nonsense on Freedom of Religion in the Times” [Paul Horwitz, Prawfs]
- Choice of Ben Stein as speaker for ABA Tech Show raises eyebrows [Derek Bambauer, InfoLaw]
- “Oblivion video game ‘Abomb” becomes federal lawsuit” [Abnormal Use]
- Tort causation: “Probability for thee, mere possibility for me” [David Oliver]
- Washington state says it won’t pay for “unnecessary” Medicaid ER visits. Can you see the unintended consequences coming? [White Coat]
- Utah says family can’t fundraise for son’s legal defense without permit [Standard-Examiner via Balko]
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- Trial lawyer TV: mistranslation, plaintiff’s experts were instrumental in “Anderson Cooper 360″ CNN story trying to keep sudden-acceleration theory alive [Corp Counsel, Toyota, PDF, background]
- “Can I get a form to file a police complaint?” No. No, you can’t [Balko]
- Madison County lawyer runs for judgeship [MCRecord; earlier on her columnist-suing past]
- RIP Dan Popeo, founder and head of Washington Legal Foundation [Mark Tapscott, Examiner]
- Louisiana: “Church Ordered to Stop Giving Away Free Water” [Todd Starnes, Fox via Amy Alkon]
- Developer of “Joustin’ Beaver” game files for declaratory judgment against singer Justin Bieber’s trademark, publicity claims [THR, Esq.]
- “Why are Indian reservations so poor?” [John Koppisch, Forbes] “Payday loans head to the Indian reservations” [Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason] Tribal recognition: high-stakes D.C. game where lobbyists get the house rake-off [Chris Edwards, Cato]
East St. Louis: “In yet another ‘swoon and fall’ case against a church, an Illinois woman claims she was injured during a church service when a parishioner who was receiving the ‘spirit’ fell backward, knocking several other worshippers into her.” Most “slain in the Spirit” suits are filed either by the worshiper who loses consciousness and falls or by a designated “catcher”; this one is on behalf of an injured bystander [Matthew Heller, On Point News; earlier here, here, here] “New tort: Gottvertrunkenism” [@Sam_Schulman]
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HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius said giving church-related sponsors of health plans an additional year to comply with the contraceptive mandate “strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.” Really? If religious freedom is in fact at stake, what kind of “balance” is attained if it gets a one-year reprieve but then expires? A balance between current freedom of institutional conscience and future lack of same? [AP] On the Obama administration’s remarkably unfriendly stance toward self-governance by church institutions, see my coverage of this term’s Hosanna-Tabor Supreme Court case. More: Michael Greve has a must-read analysis predicting the directive’s downfall in court, and pointing out the procedural dodginess of this and much other regulation implementing the ACA. And Thom Lambert asks: “What if the Government Ordered the Human Rights Campaign to Cover Conversion Therapy for Gays?”
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And I do a little happy dance at Cato at Liberty (earlier)(& Damon Root/Reason, Allahpundit; my background piece in October).
More: Hans Bader points out, regarding the Obama DoJ’s “let them rely on free association” argument, that “free-association defenses, unlike religious-freedom defenses, are generally losers, as the Supreme Court’s Hishon, Jaycees, and New York State Club Association decisions illustrate.” And: “The extreme position taken by the Obama Justice Department in the Hosanna-Tabor case is a reflection of ideologically-based hiring.”
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“A youth group adviser from California has brought a class-action suit against her employer, the Orthodox Union. …Her complaint states that in addition to her ‘nine-to-five’ duties of teaching classes, meeting with students and co-workers, cooking for holiday meals and running programs, she also had students at her house on Friday nights, Saturdays and Sundays. She had to make herself constantly available to students and their parents by phone and e-mail, and she worked around the clock while chaperoning Shabbatons and trips.” Overtime was not paid for these duties as legally required, her lawyer says. [JTA via Helfand/Prawfs; related on scope of "ministerial exception" in employment law]
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In Morristown, N.J., the city’s decision to reclassify a church-sponsored soup kitchen as a “retail food establishment” is expected to drive up the kitchen’s operating costs by at least $150,000 a year, in part by prohibiting volunteers from bringing in home-prepared food or even aprons. [William McGurn, Wall Street Journal] We’ve covered the issue periodically over the years.
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In discussions of the “ministerial exception,” which limits the scope of employment lawsuits against churches and related groups over some jobs important to their mission, the typical example often given of a job not covered by the exception is janitor. Eve Tushnet wonders why that is (scroll to “custodian of souls”; earlier on the pending Supreme Court case, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC).
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Argued yesterday before the Supreme Court, the case of Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC pits the quasi-religion of employment discrimination law against organized religion of every other sort. Guess which side the Obama administration comes down on? I explain in a new op-ed at The Daily Caller. More background: Christopher Lund (Wayne State), “In Defense of the Ministerial Exception”, North Carolina Law Review/SSRN. And per Rick Garnett at NRO “Bench Memos,” the Court’s justices in their questioning yesterday did not appear friendly toward the idea of overthrowing the exception (& followup). According to the L.A. Times and other reporting, Justice Kagan described the Justice Department’s position as “amazing.” More: Marcia McCormick, Workplace Prof (linking to transcript of oral argument, PDF)(& welcome Damon Root/Reason “Hit and Run” readers).
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- Wild hypotheticals were grist for complaint: “Widener law professor cleared of harassment charges” [NLJ, earlier here, here, here]
- Ninth Circuit: Facebook didn’t breach user’s right to accommodation of mental disability [Volokh]
- House Judiciary hearing on litigation and economic prosperity [Wajert]
- “University of Michigan to stop worrying about lawsuits, start releasing orphan works” [Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing]
- PBS airs “The Story Behind Wacky Warning Labels” [Bob Dorigo Jones]
- Fifth Circuit “candy cane” religion-in-schools case controversial among conservatives [David Upham, NR Bench Memos]
- Great moments in public records law [Cleveland Plain Dealer, earlier related]
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- Nice going, sex offender registries [Brian Dickerson, Detroit Free Press] And I’m quoted in a syndicated column by Lenore Skenazy (and thence by Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing) on the registries’ tendency to sweep in much wider circles of offender than many advocates originally had in mind. More: a tale of child-abuse registries [Skenazy];
- New York Times exposes scandal: businessman holds seat in Congress. Quick, replace him with another lawyer! [Ribstein]
- Race separation’s unlawful for school attendance. So why’s it OK for school voting districts? [Quin Hillyer, Mobile Press-Register]
- Speech and property rights in peril: “Fear of a Muslim America” [Cathy Young, Reason]
- Before blaming bank dereg for “Too Big To Fail,” read this [Mark Calabria, Cato at Liberty]
- After fatal one-car crash, drunk driver’s survivors sue popular Irish bar that served him [NJLRA; Trenton, N.J.]
- Scotland: Thief wants victim prosecuted for keeping gun in her house [Daily Record]
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Lowering the Bar has more on the trademark dispute between the International House of Pancakes (restaurant) and the International House of Prayer (church)(earlier).
Eugene Volokh has a legal analysis of the ballot proposal, which includes no religious-belief exemption. More: Dave Hoffman.
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