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...

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...

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...

House approves 'faith-based' bias in head start program.
The U.S. House of Representatives has voted narrowly to allow religious discrimination in hiring for Head Start centers run by religious groups. By a 220-196 tally that fell largely along partisan lines, the House on Sept. 22 adopted an amendment offered by Reps. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and...

Playing by different rules: if the supreme court upholds vouchers, taxpayers may have to fund sectarian schools that practice religious discrimination, teach controversial material and shun accountability.
Sister M. Angela Shaughnessy knows religious schools play by different rules than those in the public school system. In a 1996 address to parochial school officials in New Orleans, the Roman Catholic nun talked about the freedoms afforded to private schools. "People assume that students...

Faith-based favoritism: U.S. House supports rollback of religious discrimination ban in job-training bill after Bush push.
To U.S. Rep. James P. McGovern the issue is simple. "Faith-based institutions," he told fellow House members, "should be required, like all other recipients of federal funds, to adhere to basic civil rights laws, and I cannot even begin to count the number of institutions that have...

Baptist Agency May Fire Lesbian Counselor, But State Funding Is Still Issue.
A federal judge in Kentucky has dismissed part of a lawsuit against a Baptist youth agency, ruling that the institution can discriminate against gays, but may not be eligible for public funding. In a decision likely to become part of the national debate over public funding of...

Tate Da Vinci Code Pollock.
Three interesting and important artlaw cases recently came to public notice: Tate is currently being pursued before a London Employment Tribunal on the grounds of religious discrimination against an artist; the publishers of The Da Vinci Code have successfully defended a breach of copyright claim against them in London's...

First freedom fraud: Bush administration's religious liberty project draws fire from civil liberties and civil rights leaders.
U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales sounded an earnest note when championing religious freedom with a friendly audience in Nashville, Tenn. On Feb. 20, Gonzales unveiled a "First Freedom Project" before a Southern Baptist Convention executive committee meeting as an aggressive effort by the Bush administration to ensure...