A group of nuns says it’s hard to focus on their worship of God when loud music is thumping through the walls.
The Sisters of St. Charles Booromeo have filed a lawsuit against the Club Allure strip club, claiming the thumping music is disruptive. In addition, the nuns claim the establishment is in violation of state zoning laws that require adult oriented businesses to be more than 1,000 feet from a place of worship.
The nuns have been in their Stone Park, Illinois convent for 70 years.
The nuns also say that an abundance of immoral behavior has descended on the area since the opening of the club.
“Public violence, drunkenness and litter, including empty whiskey and beer bottles, discarded contraceptive packages and products and even used condoms evidencing illicit sexual misbehavior either in the club or about its environs,” the nuns claim in their lawsuit.
The nuns also say they are praying daily for God’s intervention in the case.
The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous decision in favor of a pro-life group that wanted to challenge an Ohio law that put them at risk for a lawsuit if someone felt their political ads were “false.”
The Susan B. Anthony List had sued a now-former Democratic U.S. Congressman who had claimed the group lied about him in a campaign ad that said he supported taxpayer funded abortion because of his support of the Affordable Care Act. While the Congressman dropped his complaint against the group under the Ohio law, the group sued to say the law was unconstitutional.
The group said that the lawsuit by former Rep. Steve Driehaus also violated the group’s freedom of speech. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled the group had no standing to pursue a lawsuit because the suit against them had been dropped after the election was over.
The ACLU, a very anti-life legal group, surprised observers by backing SBA List in the case.
“Speech is rarely black and white,” an ACLU spokesman said. “If the government silences one side of the debate, the public is less informed and others might be fearful of criticizing elected officials. The answer to unpopular speech is not less, but more speech.”
Anti-life groups said the case is about the “right to lie” despite the fact the SBA List has shown the Affordable Care Act includes multiple abortion funding provisions.
The Supreme Court declined in a 7-2 decision to hear the appeal of a school district that held their graduation ceremonies inside a church building, allowing a lower court ruling to stand that holding such an event inside a church is unconstitutional.
The anti-Christian group Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed a lawsuit in 1990 against the Elmbrook, Wisconsin School District which had been holding their graduation ceremonies inside a non-denominational church facility. The anti-Christianists said the mere existence of Christian symbols in the building meant the school was promoting Christianity over all other religions.
While multiple lower courts ruled in favor of the school district, the anti-Christian group continued to file appeals until the full 7th Circuit Court of Appeals overruled a three-judge 7th Circuit panel and ruled in their favor. The Supreme Court before their formal refusal to hear the case shelved the case for two years.
Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented from the majority. Justice Scalia wrote that while a school district may have to act to soothe angry people, it doesn’t mean it’s the constitution’s job to soothe hurt feelings. The justices also noted the flawed 7th Circuit ruling was in conflict with the Supreme Court’s decision in Town of Greece v. Galloway, which stated that mere offense does not equate to coercion.
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 number of residents and students protested at the offices of the Ector County (Texas) Independent School District after officials said they would be making prayer in the graduation ceremony optional.
High school students in the district had voted to have prayer as part of the ceremony but the administrators completely ignored their wishes in scheduling an “opening” and “closing” delivered by students instead of an invocation and benediction. The students would not be chosen by the graduating seniors or by academic achievement but entirely by random selection.
The move came because the anti-Christian group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State threatened to sue the school if they allowed the students to follow through on their vote to have a prayer included in the event.
Students held up signs saying “We are a democracy; we voted to pray” and “As Americans, we have the freedom to pray.”
School board member Doyle Woodall said that the board did not want to take the action they did but that it was forced upon them by anti-Christianists using the courts to force their will on the majority.
A Hawaiian court has dismissed the majority of a lawsuit that a pair of anti-Christianists brought against area churches saying they were defrauding local public schools of rental fees.
Mitchell Kahle and Holly Huber had filed a lawsuit claiming that five churches had defrauded school districts by coercing them into lower fees on rents and utility charges by submitting false records.
The complaint filed in the First Circuit Court of Hawaii said the churches owe the government $5.6 million because of discounted rates and for use of the facilities longer than allowed by contracts. The anti-Christian duo filed under the state’s False Claims Act.
Judge Virginia Crandall said that there was insufficient evidence that the churches violated any laws.
The Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the churches, says that the churches were facing frivolous claims from people who just want to harass Christians.
“The only thing these churches have done is serve the schools and bring great benefit to their surrounding communities,” ADF Senior Counsel Erik Stanley said in a written statement. “No one benefits from this suit except the two atheists bringing it, who stand to gain financially if they are successful.”
Two former Bryan College professors who rebelled against the school by refusing to sign unaltered the Statement of Faith affirming Adam and Eve are now suing the school.
The contracts of Stephen Barnett and Steven DeGeorge are demanding they be given their jobs back along with the court declaring the school’s statement of faith be declared null and void. The two former teacher claim that by affirming humans came from Adam and Eve and not via evolution the school’s board was modifying the school charter.
The school’s Board of Trustees said their statement that “we believe that all humanity is descended from Adam and Eve. They are historical persons created by God in a special formative act, and not from previously existing life forms” is nothing more than clarification of the fourth item in the school’s Statement of Faith.
Students have joined several faculty members in opposing the school’s standing on the Scripture in deciding the origin of life.
A group of cheerleaders at a school in Kountze, Texas were told by a court they can continue to display Bible verses at football games, but their attorney may still appeal the decision.
Attorney Hiram Sasser says the ruling doesn’t clearly protect the rights of the students to continue using the verses in the future.
“I don’t think it provides any protection for the religious liberties of Kountze cheerleaders in the future,” Sasser said.
The court dismissed the suit saying it was now moot because the school district had changed their policies and because the ban was repealed the cheerleaders no longer had standing to advance their case.
The suit began in 2012 when the anti-Christian Freedom From Religion Foundation threatening the school because cheerleaders would hold up banners for the football team to run through that contained Bible verses.
A Maryland county commissioner says she’s ready to go to jail for her faith in Christ.
Robin Bartlett Frazier, a Carroll County commissioner, said that she will refuse to acknowledge a federal judge’s order that the county’s meetings no longer open with prayers that mention Jesus Christ or any deity.
“If we cease to believe that our rights come from God, we cease to be America,” Robin Bartlett Frazier told CBS. “We’ve been told to be careful. But we’re going to be careful all the way to Communism if we don’t start standing up and saying ‘no.’”
The anti-Christian group American Humanist Association had filed a lawsuit in 2012 on behalf of what they claimed were three residents of the county. Judge William Quarles Jr. ruled on Wednesday the board must stop opening meetings with sectarian prayers.
The Supreme Court is currently considering a similar case.
Kentucky Senator Rand Paul announced that he has filed one of the largest class-action lawsuits in history in response to spying operations by the National Security Agency against American citizens.
The suit was joined by the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks and filed in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia.
The suit claims the NSA’s program that collects the metadata of American’s phone calls violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. The lawsuit wants the court to rule the program unconstitutional and order the government to immediately stop the program.
“There’s a huge and growing swell of protest in this country of people who are outraged that their records would be taken without suspicion, without a judge’s warrant and without individualization,” Sen. Paul told reporters.
A Justice Departments spokesman said that they expect to win the case because at least 15 other judges have ruled the program legal.
