LGBT and Religious Rights Collide in U.S. Supreme Court Foster-Care Case

By Reuters, Wire Service Content Nov. 3, 2020

As part of the case, Catholic Social Services is asking the court to overturn a 1990 Supreme Court ruling called Employment Division v. Smith, which was authored by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Barrett's conservative mentor.
Read more

The Supreme Court Tries to Settle the Religious Liberty Culture War

By David French
TIME Magazine, July 14, 2020

Rarely has a single Supreme Court term created such alternating spasms of anger and joy, bouncing back and forth across the ideological aisle. And rarely has that seesaw reaction been so concentrated into a single, salient cultural issue – the perceived conflict between gay rights and religious liberty.
Read more

Dear SCOTUS: LGBTQ+ People Are Religious and Also Deserve Liberty

BY BRAD SEARS, The Advocate, Oct. 20 2020

While conservative Supreme Court justices see a conflict between equal rights and religious liberty, a new Williams Institute study shows faith is important to LGBTQ+ Americans.
Read more

Religious liberty’s big week at the Supreme Court

By Harry Bruinius and Henry Gass Staff
Christian Science Monitor, July 10, 2020

Taken together, all three decisions continue the Supreme Court’s prioritization of religious liberty as it expands this protected and unique sphere in American social life. On the one hand, the decisions of the current court could be seen as chipping away at the wall of separation – an extra-textual First Amendment metaphor that often makes religious conservatives bristle. 
Read more


We Can Find Common Ground on Gay Rights and Religious Liberty
It does not have to be all or nothing.

By Jonathan Rauch and Peter Wehner
New York Times, June 22, 2020

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling extending employment-discrimination protections to L.G.B.T. Americans — in a 6-to-3 decision, with a conservative justice writing the majority opinion and another conservative, the chief justice, joining it — was a milestone.
Read more

Legislating religious liberty: Supreme Court decision draws new attention to “Fairness for All” proposal

by Harvest Prude
World, June 18, 2020

Lawmakers have filed bills to make sexual orientation and gender identity protected classes in the workplace during every session of Congress since 1994, but none have made it to a president’s desk. Now, as Justice Samuel Alito wrote in a dissenting opinion this week, the U.S. Supreme Court has done much of their job for them.
Read more


Are we headed toward a federal version of the Utah Compromise on LGBTQ rights?

By Kelsey Dallas
Deseret News, June 17, 2020

In the short term, supporters of the Equality Act have momentum. However, the Supreme Court justices’ comments in Monday’s landmark gay rights decision left some Fairness for All advocates feeling hopeful.
Read more


Christian conservatives rattled after Supreme Court rules against LGBT discrimination

By Sarah Pulliam Bailey
The Washington Post, June 15, 2020

The ruling was met with widespread praise among LGBT rights groups, which have long argued against such employment discrimination.

The decision was also met with alarm by several religious conservatives who fear what it could eventually mean for their religious freedom and how it could affect faith-based employers, including religious health-care providers, religious schools and social services operated by religious groups.
Read more

My family has served Michigan for decades, but my daughter faces discrimination here

By Rev. Ruth D. Fitzgerald, Area Conference Minister of the Grand West Association Michigan Conference, United Church of Christ

Here in Michigan, we started the year with a statewide conversation on the importance of dignity and respect for LGBTQ people when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order protecting public employees from anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Read more


Who Is Weaponizing Religious Liberty?

By People For the American Way Foundation

It Takes a Right-Wing Village to Turn a Cherished American Principle Into a Destructive Culture-War Weapon. Read more


Religious Liberty Should Do No Harm

By Emily London and Maggie Siddiqi
Center for American Progress

Twenty-five years ago, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) was signed into law to clarify and expand upon the right to religious liberty. RFRA outlines that the government “should not substantially burden religious exercise without compelling justification” and that it should only do so if it furthers a compelling governmental interest in the least restrictive way possible. Read more

Supreme Court, with Justice Barrett, to hear major LGBT rights case day after election

By Tucker Higgins, CNBC Nov. 2, 2020

The Supreme Court is set to hear a case concerning the rights of gay and lesbian Americans on Wednesday morning in a dispute that advocates are warning could pierce holes in the nation’s anti-discrimination laws.
Read more

Supreme Court Steps Up Where Congress Fails

By Derek Monson & Rev. Marian Edmonds-Allen
RealClear Politics, July 11, 2020

Much of the nation will, for now, continue in a futile attempt to achieve complete victory over “the other side.” But the Supreme Court’s rulings on LGBTQ equality and religious freedom, simultaneously protecting both, reveal a better way. 
Read more

Court Rules Against Students In LGBT Anti-Discrimination Lawsuit Against University

By Kim Swan, South Florida Gay News, Oct 20 2020

When two California university students were expelled for being in same-sex marriages, they filed a lawsuit claiming the school violated anti-discrimination laws.

However, the Central District of California has sided with Fuller Theological Seminary against the students, ruling that as a religious organization enforcing its beliefs on marriage, it falls under a religious exemption to the federal anti-discrimination law.
Read more

Supreme Court strikes perfect balance between LGBT rights and religious freedom

By Brad Polumbo
Washington Examiner, July 08, 2020

Most people, including most Republicans, believe that gay and transgender people should be protected under anti-discrimination laws. The immorality of firing someone from a grocery store for who they love or evicting someone from an apartment over their gender identity is obvious and self-evident. However, conservatives and other religious liberty advocates rightly insist there must be limits to these protections in order to protect religious freedom and respect the First Amendment.
Read more


‘A LITTLE LIGHT:’ Landmark LGBTQ ruling sets stage for statewide civil rights action, debate over religious exemptions

By Andy Balaskovitz
MiBiz, Sunday, June 21, 2020

A landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling on June 15 bars workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and also highlights additional work that needs to be done in Michigan. 

Advocates in the LGBTQ and business community say that work includes expanding the state’s civil rights law to prevent discrimination in housing, health care and public accommodations, but also settling what’s been a major debate over religious exemptions in such cases. 
Read more


LGBTQ Rights v. Religious Liberties

By Elizabeth Redden
Inside Higher Ed, June 17, 2020

Religious colleges say Supreme Court decision finding that federal antidiscrimination law protects LGBTQ employees could open their policies up to challenge.

”Some in higher education praised the ruling. Peter McPherson, the president of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, issued a statement applauding "this landmark advancement of human rights."
Read more

HOW WILL NEW LGBT+ RULES AFFECT RELIGIOUS LIBERTY?

By Christopher D. Cunningham
Public Square Magazine, June 17, 2020

Interview with Douglas Laycock
Christopher Cunningham: The Supreme Court’s recent Title VII ruling was about employment protections for gay and transgender individuals. But many people are talking about religious freedom. Why? How does this case have anything to do with churches or religion?

Douglas Laycock: All the cases decided involved commercial employers, none of whom were making religious liberty arguments in the Supreme Court. So the Court had no occasion to decide anything about religious liberty, and it didn’t.
Read more

Symposium: LGBT rights and religious freedom—finding a better way
Alexander Dushku and R. Shawn Gunnarson
SCOTUS Blog June 17, 2020

Everyone should be clear that the dilution or breakdown of Title VII’s religious exemption would pose dire consequences for religions with unpopular beliefs regarding marriage, family, gender and sexuality. As Justice Samuel Alito points out in his dissent, acting on those religious beliefs could expose a church (never mind religious schools or faith-based charities) to serious if not existential risks because of the newly expanded reach of Title VII.
Read more


Think Religiously Motivated Discrimination Can’t Affect You? Guess Again.

By James Esseks, Director, ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & HIV Project

Aimee Stephens knows first-hand how religiously-motivated discrimination can wreck your life. Aimee worked as a funeral director for a Michigan funeral home for six years. Aimee is a woman who is transgender, but for six years she went to work presenting as a man, while she struggled to be able to live her life as a woman. Read more


Balancing LGBTQ Rights And Religious Liberty

By National Public Radio

Two Republicans want to bridge the conflicting claims of religious liberty and LGBT rights. Their "Fairness For All" initiative is supported by some Christian leaders and conservative LGBT activists.. Read more


Reclaiming Religious Freedom

By Emily London and Maggie Siddiqi
Center for American Progress

Last month, the most religiously diverse U.S. Congress in our nation’s history was sworn into office. For proponents of religious liberty, this was an incredible opportunity to celebrate this fundamental American right. At the same time, however, the current political context raises crucial challenges to religious liberty that this Congress must urgently address.  Read more

Supreme Court adoption case could have national impact on religious liberty

By Matt Hadro, Catholic News Agency, Oct 28, 2020

As the Supreme Court hears oral arguments in another religious foster care case on Nov. 4, Fulton v. Philadelphia, its ruling could impact a number of other cases including the Blais’s.

“It shows what is coming next,” said Becket senior counsel Lori Windham on a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.
Read more

Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
SCOTUSblog Coverage

Various opinions, current
Read more

Whether free exercise plaintiffs can only succeed by proving a particular type of discrimination claim — namely that the government would allow the same conduct by someone who held different religious views — as two circuits have held, or whether courts must consider other evidence that a law is not neutral and generally applicable, as six circuits have held; (2) whether Employment Division v. Smith should be revisited; and (3) whether the government violates the First Amendment by conditioning a religious agency’s ability to participate in the foster care system on taking actions and making statements that directly contradict the agency’s religious beliefs.

Support for LGBTQ Rights, with a Signal for Religious Liberty: What Does Bostock Actually Mean for Employers?

By Baker McKenzie
The Employer Report July 1, 2020

”An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court in the 6-3 opinion. “Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.” Justice Gorsuch and fellow conservative Chief Justice John Roberts joined liberal Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor in the majority.
Read more


Devil in the detail of SCOTUS ruling on workplace bias puts LGBTQ rights and religious freedom on collision course

By Kelsy Burke, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Emily Kazyak, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
The Telegraph, June 22, 2020

The Supreme Court’s landmark ruling extending workplace discrimination protection to cover sexual orientation and gender identity was cheered by LGBTQ people and allies. Indeed, the June 15 decision represents a big win in the fight for LGBTQ equality.

But buried towards the end of a 33-page majority opinion written by conservative stalwart Justice Neil Gorsuch is a sober warning that those celebrating the decision might have initially missed.
Read more


Stay tuned: Ceasefire in battles between LGBTQ rights and religious liberty?

By Terry Mattingly
Get Religion, June 21, 2020

One thing is clear – the U.S. Supreme Court will have to settle these kinds of conflicts, said Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia Law School, who has defended both same-sex marriage and the religious-liberty rights of traditional faith groups. He was counsel of record for the Hosanna-Tabor school at the high court.
Read more

The True Extent of Religious Liberty in America, Explained: The citadel of religious liberty may be under attack, but its walls are high and strong.

By David French
The Dispatch, June 21, 2020

I’m going to outline the key federal statutory and constitutional protections for religious liberty and religious Americans that exist now, today, after Bostock and why I believe that, if anything, many of these protections are more likely to be extended, not restricted, in the coming days and weeks. 
Read more


THE RAINBOW AND THE CROSS AT THE SUPREME COURT

R.S. Ghio
Public Square Magazine, June 15, 2020

On one side is a cultural and political coming of age for LGBTQ+ rights. On the other are thousands of years of religious tradition and deeply rooted views of sexual morality. One may debate whether the rainbow and the cross are ethically at odds, but those claiming adherence to one or the other tend to fight bare-knuckled.  
Read more


Gay rights, religion, and what’s wrong with principles

By Andrew Koppelman, June 9, 2020

The principles at issue here seem irreconcilable.  But they are themselves parasitic on interests.  The way to think clearly about the conflict is to look past the principles to the underlying interests.  Discrimination harms its victims’ urgent interest in equal treatment in public spaces.  Religious liberty protects what many people regard as their deepest concerns.  The legal rights in question are tools for protecting those interests.
Read more


Recognizing Religious Freedom as an LGBT Issue

Published in The Hill
By Ryan Thoreson Researcher, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Human Rights Watch

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference. Read more



Georgia Equality praises new federal LGBTQ civil rights bill

By Patrick Saunders, Project Q Atlanta

Georgia’s most influential LGBTQ advocacy organization applauded the introduction of a new federal LGBTQ-inclusive civil rights bill, but cautioned that such protections are still urgently needed on the state level. Read more


LGBT rights are not incompatible with religious liberty unless we make them so

By Rev. Marian Edmonds-Allen and Derek Monson

We, the two authors of this piece, are something of an odd couple. One of us is an advocate for LGBT equality, the other an advocate for religious freedom. Two years ago, we began a discussion about gay rights and religious liberty. Read more