EEOC Issues New Compliance Assistance On Religious Discrimination.
Introduction On July 22, 2008, "[i]n response to an increase in charges of religious discrimination, increased religious diversity in the United States, and requests for guidance from stakeholders and agency personnel investigating and litigating claims of religious discrimination," the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued a new...

Church, state and president Obama: with '9 in '09' project, Americans United presses new administration to repair Bush damage to church-state wall.
On July 1, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, then the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for president, traveled to Zanesville, Ohio, to give a major speech on "faith-based" initiatives. Many advocates of church-state separation were on the edge of their seats. Obama had emphasized his Christian faith repeatedly on...

Or for poorer? How same-sex marriage threatens religious liberty.
I. INTRODUCTION II. THE EVOLUTION OF SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IN LAW A. The Decades-Long Effort to Strike Down Traditional Marriage Laws Has Been a Consistently Losing One, Until Recently B. By Firmly Establishing Same-Sex Marriage in Law, the Goodridge Decision Opened the Floodgates of Gay Marriage Litigation Across the Country...

Restoring religious freedom to the workplace: Title VII, RFRA and religious accommodation.
INTRODUCTION Clashes between employers and employees over religious observance in the workplace are an increasingly familiar feature in the legal system. Accordingly, employees filed nearly 3000 charges of religious discrimination with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") and with state and local agencies in 1994--an increase...

Faith Czar Jim Towey declares 'culture war' at White House event.
Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, told attendees at a recent conference that there is a "culture war" under way pitting believers against those who want a "godless orthodoxy." Speaking at the "First White House National Conference on Faith-Based and...

God, labor, and the law: the pursuit of religious equality in Northern Ireland's workforce.
I. INTRODUCTION Religious sectarianism has permeated life in Northern Ireland for almost 400 years. Like racism and sexism, it creates barriers to achieving equal opportunity. During the last twenty-five years, many policies have been developed in an attempt to deal with these barriers and the societal divide...

Religion and sex in the Yale dorms: a legislative proposal requiring private universities to provide religious accommodations.
INTRODUCTION On October 15, 1997, four students filed suit against Yale University, claiming that their constitutionally protected right to free exercise of religion had been violated.(1) Yale has a policy requiring first- and second-year students to live in university housing.(2) These four students, all Orthodox Jews, claimed...

LOOK BEFORE YOU SIGN: Ex corde and college trustees.
The revised, and now Vatican-approved, local ordinances ["U.S. norms"] of the Catholic bishops of the United States for the implementation of the 1990 Apostolic Constitution Ex corde ecclesiae go into effect next May. They prescribe requirements for Catholic colleges and universities to be "officially" Catholic. A large majority of...

Employment Advisory: EEOC Issues New Compliance Guidance On Religious Discrimination In The Workplace In Response To A Dramatic Increase In Charge.
In July, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued a new section (Section 12) to its Compliance Manual specifically related to religious discrimination in the workplace. Section 12 includes a comprehensive review of the relevant provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the...

Religious free exercise and anti-discrimination law.
I will speak about the conflict between anti-discrimination statutes and religious free exercise. I want to talk about these issues specifically in light of two areas of contemporary religious free exercise litigation and controversy. So much of the church-state debate seems to be driven by issues such as Ten...