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INTRODUCTION I. IMPLICATIONS OF PIERCE FOR THE VOUCHER DEBATE II. REASSESSING PIERCE A. NATURE OF THE PARENTAL RIGHT IN PIERCE B. MAGNITUDE OF THE BURDEN III. PIERCE AS LIMITED TO [...]

INTRODUCTION I. PIERCE V. SOCIETY OF SISTERS II. THE PURPOSES OF PUBLIC EDUCATION A. DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION B. A DIVERSE STUDENT BODY 1. Autonomy and Liberal Education 2. Empathy, Creativity, and [...]

The profile of Michael A. Newdow that ran in the Los Angeles Times March 23 could not be called flattering. Newdow, a Sacramento emergency-room physician, was slated the next day [...]

In June congress held hearings on the Religious Liberty Protection Act of 1998 (RLPA). The new bill represents an attempt to breathe new life into the Religious Freedom Restoration Act [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court on April 17 refused to rule against a California school district's rejection of an ad containing the Ten Commandments on a high school baseball field sign. [...]

Americans United and a broad array of educational and public policy groups have launched a legal challenge to Florida's new religious school voucher program. Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) signed [...]

A federal appeals court has upheld a Virginia county's prayer policy that discriminates against religious minorities. On April 14, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals [...]

The Utah Supreme Court has ruled that the state's law banning polygamy does not violate a practicing polygamist's First Amendment religious liberty. Tom Green, 55, was convicted in 2001 of [...]

Virginia Attorney General Jerry Kilgore announced in August that he plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse a federal appeals court decision barring supper prayers at Virginia Military [...]

Attorneys for the Justice Department and the city of New York have told the U.S. Supreme Court that the justices made the wrong decision 12 years ago when they barred [...]

Two years ago, the 103rd Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, responding to a decision of the Supreme Court in 1990 that had diminished the protection afforded by the [...]

A group of private school advocates in Wisconsin has sued the state after officials refused to allow their schools to enter the state's voucher program. The school organizers claim that [...]

Texas's top court has struck down a law that allowed government regulation of seminaries. HEB Ministries, the Hispanic Bible Institute and the Southern Bible Institute had sued the state, challenging [...]

In an apparent election-year move to please the Religious Right, the U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill designed to discourage citizens from challenging government-sponsored religious activities. In late [...]

Church-state cases before the Supreme Court always precipitate a whirlwind of activity here at Americans United. This was particularly true in early March when a duo of back-to-back arguments about [...]

American law is not based on the Ten Commandments, and nothing in the Constitution gives an Alabama judge a legal right to display the Decalogue in a court building, a [...]

A New York law that attempted to enforce kosher food standards has been erased, after a recent action by the U.S. Supreme Court. On Feb. 24 the high court announced [...]

A federal judge has ruled that pre-dinner prayers at the Virginia Military Institute are an unconstitutional violation of church-state separation. On Jan. 24, U.S. District Judge Norman Moon struck down [...]

The Charleston, S.C., County Council violated the First Amendment by erecting a display of the Ten Commandments on government property, a state judge ruled in March. Acting in a case [...]