Carrie Clark is a lawyer in Illinois. The opinions herein are that of the author only. Any information in this post is for discussion purposes only, and is not offered as legal advice.
Last Tuesday, the Freedom From Religion Foundation sued (PDF) to prevent Arizona Governor Jan Brewer from holding another Day of Prayer: FFRF claims that the Day of Prayer proclamation violates Article II, Section 12 in the Arizona Constitution… No public money or property shall be appropriated for or applied to any religious worship, exercise, or instruction, or to the support of any religious establishment. … and Article XX, Section 1: Perfect toleration of religious sentiment shall be secured to every inhabitant of this state,… Read more
Last month, the Chicago Tribune released a review of the National Institute of Health’s allocation of research funds. The results are equally infuriating and disheartening. Among other dubious, implausible propositions, NIH funded research of whether distant prayer can remedy the symptoms of AIDS. I’m sure I don’t need to tell my more astute readers what the result of that study was. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, the small branch of NIH responsible for this atrocious waste of money,… Read more
Back in 2006, a Southern Baptist preacher who happens to sit in the Kentucky legislature introduced a law that would require the Kentucky Department of Homeland Security to declare in its training materials that security is unattainable without reliance on “Almighty God.” American Atheists filed a lawsuit, claiming that the law violated both the U.S. and Kentucky Constitutions. The Franklin Circuit Court in Kentucky (the trial court) agreed with them and ruled that the law was unconstitutional. Then, the law… Read more
I feel like I have read the same story again and again. I don’t understand what people don’t get about the simple words of the First Amendment. Yet once again, we have an issue of a municipality apparently raising a (literal) banner in support of sectarian values. “Keep Christ in Christmas,” urges the banner. (Are they worried about our spelling skills? Concerned about “Xmas”?) Last week, the Freedom From Religion Foundation wrote a letter to the mayor of Pitman, New… Read more
Ten nurses at a New Jersey hospital have filed a lawsuit claiming the hospital’s new policy requires them to assist in performing abortions. They sued under a federal law which prohibits discrimination against any employee for refusing to “perform or assist in the performance of such a procedure or abortion on the grounds that his performance or assistance in the performance of the procedure or abortion would be contrary to his religious beliefs or moral convictions.” Basically, any institution that… Read more
