Christian organizations are demanding the Internal Revenue Service release the details of a deal they made with the anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation to target churches and their tax-exempt status.
The agreement between the IRS and the anti-Christianists was part of a hearing in federal court on July 17th to settle a lawsuit brought in 2012.
The virulent anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation said that churches were illegally influencing the outcome of elections by talking to congregants about political issues from the pulpit during services.
The Faith and Freedom Coalition says that the IRS has a history of harassment of conservative and Christian groups, making this secret deal with those aiming to destroy Christians dangerous for all Americans.
“Given the history of the IRS in harassing, persecuting and infringing on the First Amendment rights of Christians and other people of faith, this is a deeply disturbing development,” said Ralph Reed, chairman of Faith & Freedom Coalition. “For the Christian community to be targeted for increased enforcement power and the threat of loss of tax-exempt status by this scandal-plagued agency defies logic, common sense, and any sound legal basis.”
The group is not the only ones looking into the secret deal. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt has sent letters to the IRS and Department of Justice demanding to see all communications between the government and the anti-Christianists.
A California school district is being defiant in its refusal to apologize for infringing on the First Amendment rights of students by censoring God or Jesus from student led functions.
Attorneys representing the Brawley Union High School District wrote a 10 page letter defending the school’s right to silence students from mentioning God or Jesus at graduation.
“It is well established in the Ninth Circuit and California that a public school salutatorian has no constitutional right to lead a prayer or include sectarian or proselytizing content in his/her graduation speech,” the document reads.
The district is the place where 18-year-old Brooks Hamby made national headlines by standing up for his Christians beliefs and his right under the First Amendment to say the name of Jesus during a graduation ceremony speech. His lawyers have been demanding the school apologize for their infringement on his religious freedom.
“The district was legally obligated to ensure prayers and other sectarian, proseltyzing content were omitted from Mr. Hamby’s speech,” the school’s attorneys wrote. “Censorship of the speech was necessary to avoid an Establishment Clause violation.”
“I was really surprised the school would deny my speech not once, twice, but three times,” Hamby told Fox News Todd Starnes. “I just wanted to say a few nice words and allow people to see the good news – which is the Gospel.”
A Texas appellate court has found a Texas pastor and a member of his congregation that had been arrested for crossing a police line at an event where they were protesting not guilty.
Pastor Joey Fault and members of the Kingdom Baptist Church in Venus, Texas were protesting at an event in Fort Worth Texas in October 2012. When some of the event’s attendees were upset the Christians were passing out information and pamphlets that disagreed with the event’s mission, the police formed a human barricade to keep the Christians from being able to reach attendees.
Pastor Faust told the Christian News Network police told them that they could go no further and they were forbidden from even crossing the street.
The pastor and his group continued their protest but then noted police were allowing those who were not part of the church group to pass through their line and across the street. The pastor then attempted to cross the street and was immediately seized upon by the police and arrested for “interfering with public duties.” He was jailed for 20 hours and released on $1,500 bail.
Last May, a judge said the pastor and another member of his congregation who arrested on the same charge were guilty. The case was appealed to the Second District of Texas Court of Appeals that ruled the men were not guilty and that the police had infringed on the First Amendment rights of the church.
“The skirmish line prohibited all member of the church from exercising their right of free speech merely because of their association with the church,” the court rules. “This is too far a limitation.”
The North Carolina House of Representatives has passed a bill that would protect the rights of students to express their religion along with allowing teachers and staff to voluntarily participate in student-led religious activities at schools.
The bill, SB370, was presented to the House after an elementary school student was banned from reading a self-written poem about her grandfather. The grandfather was a World War II veteran who often cited his prayers for protection as part of his stories of service. The school said the student could not mention God.
The bill states that students may “[e]xpress religious viewpoints in a public school to the same extent and under the same circumstances as a student is permitted to express viewpoints on nonreligious topics or subjects in the school.”
The bill also prohibits any teacher from issuing a bad grade to a student because they may not like a student’s religious beliefs. In addition, the bill includes protections for teachers and staff to be a part of student-led activities in schools that include religious worship.
“Local boards of education may not prohibit school personnel from participating in religious activities on school grounds that are initiated by students at reasonable times before or after the instructional day so long as such activities are voluntary for all parties and do not conflict with the responsibilities or assignments of such personnel,” the bill states.
The ACLU has taken issue with the bill.
The bill is expected to be approved by the Senate.
A federal court has sided with a Christian student who challenged his school’s rules that he could not preach on the campus without prior approval of the administration.
The ruling says that the outdoor areas of the Virginia Community College System as “venues for free expression” and that the school is prohibited from enforcing “speech zones” which would be the only places students could express their views.
The school system has announced they are going to comply with the ruling and change their rules.
“Colleges should support, not censor, student speech,” Alliance Defending Freedom lawyer Travis Barham said. “We comment the Virginia Community College System for revising its speech policy to align with what a marketplace of ideas should be.”
The previous policy said that no student could make public speeches on campus except in designated areas, and only if they were members of student groups approved by the school and had their message cleared four days in advance. Christian Parks filed suit after he was twice prevented from preaching last fall in the school’s public courtyard.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring had decided not to defend the policy in court.
A North Carolina license plate that encourages people to “Choose Life” has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal panel.
Pro-abortion activists had sued to have the plates removed saying it was an unconstitutional promotion of religion by the state, but settled for the ruling regarding First Amendment issues.
The three-judge panel on the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a lower court judge that said the legislature’s refusal to allow pro-abortion messages to be placed on license plates while allowing the anti-abortion “Choose Life” violated the First Amendment rights of some citizens.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Roy Cooper said he is reportedly reviewing the ruling to see if they will appeal to the full appeals court or to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The 4th Circuit had previously ruled that “Choose Life” license plates from South Carolina were also unconstitutional. The ACLU has been pushing the cases against the Choose Life license plates.
The National Security Agency’s mass phone data collection program is illegal and should be ended.
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board released a report Thursday that concludes a four-month review into the NSA and its data collection process. The report was leaked Wednesday to the New York Times and the Washington Post.
The panel says that the NSA actions could violate constitutional protections of right of speech, freedom of association and privacy.
“The connections revealed by the extensive database of telephone records gathered under the program will necessarily include relationships established among individuals and groups for political, religious, and other expressive purposes,” the board said in their report. “Compelled disclosure to the government of information revealing these associations can have a chilling effect on the exercise of First Amendment rights.”
Defenders of the NSA expressed their dislike of the report saying that multiple federal judges had approved of the program and it wasn’t the board’s charge to decide on legal issues related to the NSA program.
The anti-Christian activist group American Humanist Association is suing allegedly on behalf of two students accusing teacher Gwen Pope and the Fayette Missouri R-III School District of violating the Constitution by allowing a Christian club to meet before the start of the school day.
The lawsuit says the teacher committed the crimes of praying for an injured student, organizing a project to feed hungry children and was cavorting with a Methodist.
Pope is no longer teaching at the school but was the sponsor of the Fellowship of Christian Students at Fayette High School. The group has gathered since 2010 to meet and pray before the start of the school day along with reading the Bible.
The anti-Christian group says the two unnamed students had faced “unwelcome encounters with the classroom prayer sessions.” Apparently the students could see their classmates inside the classroom as they walked past in the mornings.
The group also said the teacher having a Bible in her possession “violates the Establishment Clause as a student would reasonably perceive it as her promoting her religious views to her students.”
The school superintendent told Fox News that he cannot comment on the suit because they had not yet received a copy but that they will defend their students’ and teachers’ First Amendment rights.
The U.S. Supreme Court said they will hear arguments for cases involving the Obamacare requirement for health plans to cover birth control as it relates to for-profit companies.
The two cases will be heard together. The first involves Christian retailer Hobby Lobby and the second a Pennsylvania wood products manufacturer. Both busineses claim the mandate that requires them to provide “morning after pills” in employee health care plans violates their Christian beliefs because the drugs essentially produce abortions.
The Court must decide whether a company can have First Amendment religious freedom protections. The Supreme Court likely took the case because lower courts have split on the issue with Hobby Lobby winning their case and Conestoga Wood Specialties losing in lower federal courts.
“My family and I are encouraged that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide our case,” Steve Green, Hobby Lobby’s founder and CEO, told the Christian Post. “This legal challenge has always remained about one thing and one thing only: the right of our family businesses to live out our sincere and deeply held religious convictions as guaranteed by the law and the Constitution. Business owners should not have to choose between violating their faith and violating the law.”
At least 30 public universities have agreed to make changes to their policies to make sure the First Amendment rights of Christian students will be protected on campus.
The Alliance Defending Freedom has listed a wide variety of violations against Christian students and groups including forcing those groups to allow voting members of the group be people hostile to the group’s beliefs and to prohibit those groups from using facilities that non-religious students groups are free to use. Continue reading →
