Public Opinion on Abortion
Abortion has long been a contentious issue in the United States, and it is one that sharply divides Americans along partisan, ideological and religious lines.
Abortion has long been a contentious issue in the United States, and it is one that sharply divides Americans along partisan, ideological and religious lines.
In Pew Research Center polling in 2001, Americans opposed same-sex marriage by a margin of 57% to 35%. Since then, support for same-sex marriage has steadily grown.
Conflicts between clergy and their employers are fairly common within religious organizations, and courts are often called upon to resolve these disputes. The Supreme Court has decided two cases in this area of law that build on its ruling in Watson v. Jones and other church property decisions. In the first of these decisions, Gonzalez […]
Church property disputes often arise when a disagreement – either among members of a congregation or between a congregation and its national denomination – leads to a legal battle for control of the congregation’s property. This can include not only the house of worship itself but also financial assets and even the right to use […]
Just three years after Allen, the Supreme Court addressed two such aid packages in Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971). One was a Rhode Island plan that paid 15 percent of the salaries of private school teachers who taught exclusively secular courses. The other was a Pennsylvania plan that reimbursed private schools for teaching secular subjects, and, […]
The form of religious accommodation most clearly permitted by the Establishment Clause is one that exempts both religious organizations and their secular counterparts from a particular legal requirement. Throughout American history, all levels of government have enacted these religion-neutral accommodations, most notably tax exemptions for both secular and religious nonprofit organizations. The Supreme Court addressed […]
Although the most constitutionally acceptable accommodations apply equally to religious and secular organizations, the government at times has found reason to extend an exemption solely to religious believers or organizations. These religion-specific exemptions are often a response to an earlier law that significantly burdened religious practice or belief. For example, a law prohibiting all alcohol […]
Washington, D.C. In the Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation decision in June 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court made it more difficult for courts to enforce the Establishment Clause’s restrictions on government funding of religion. In Hein, the high court ruled that unless a legislative body has specifically directed funding to a religious organization or […]
The Court Returns to the Belief-Action Distinction As a result of the Supreme Court’s repeated refusal to uphold free exercise claims in virtually all contexts other than Yoder and a handful of unemployment compensation cases, many legal scholars began to wonder whether the distinction between religious belief and action established in the 19th century polygamy […]