Religious liberty advocates, including BJC, are asking the Department of Health and Human Services to go further in articulating all exemption requirements needed to comply with federal religious freedom law.

A lawsuit brought by a group of Muslim and Christian plaintiffs appears headed to a federal appeals court, and it bears watching. The families wanted to opt their children out of reading books with LGBTQ+ characters because the books conflict with their religious beliefs.

A coalition of Texas chaplains say that training for the chaplaincy counsels against providing such support for school-aged children.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a challenge to a recent Connecticut law removing religious exemptions from the state’s vaccination mandate for schoolchildren.

The Court clarified that the standard an employer must meet for establishing an “undue hardship” is not the “de minimis cost” test used by courts for many years – including by the 7th Circuit in Kluge – but is instead whether a religious accommodation would “result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.”

The question of whether the First Amendment allows for publicly funded religious charter schools may make its way to the Supreme Court before long.

The EEOC report suggests in a footnote that a “significant increase in vaccine-related charges filed on the basis of religion” is responsible for the spike in religion cases generally.

In rejecting the request for a preliminary injunction, the court emphasized that the policy impacts the teacher's speech only in her official capacity as public school employee, not her private expression.