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The Advocate

Courts, law, and religious liberty. Know the cases. Win the conversations.

Everyone Who Read Bergin in July Heard the Second Circuit Tell Religious Workers to Prove Their Boss Hated Their Faith. On September 15 the Court Added a Footnote. It Is Eighty Eight Words Long, and It Came After Washington Pushed Back.

Everyone Who Read Bergin in July Heard the Second Circuit Tell Religious Workers to Prove Their Boss Hated Their Faith. On September 15 the Court Added a Footnote. It Is Eighty Eight Words Long, and It Came After Washington Pushed Back.

On September 15 the Second Circuit amended Bergin after pushback from the federal government. Two footnotes: no religious animus required, but the denial must be because of your faith and not your late paperwork. We print the eighty eight words.

Everyone Will Call the Eighty One Religious Plaintiffs Suing Over Immigration the Religious Left. Read Paragraph Nine of the Mennonite Complaint. It Cites Hobby Lobby, and What You Do With That Is the Test of Whether You Ever Believed in RFRA.

Everyone Will Call the Eighty One Religious Plaintiffs Suing Over Immigration the Religious Left. Read Paragraph Nine of the Mennonite Complaint. It Cites Hobby Lobby, and What You Do With That Is the Test of Whether You Ever Believed in RFRA.

Religion News Service counts eighty one religious plaintiffs in the immigration lawsuits, most pleading RFRA. Paragraph nine of the Mennonite Church USA complaint cites Hobby Lobby. The Advocate reads it and asks both sides the same question.

Everyone Will Call This the Graham Family's Ambassador. Read the Statute. The Chair Has Been Empty for Twenty Months, Xi Lands in Eight Days, and the Job Was Never to Free Prisoners. It Was to Make Sure Someone in the Room Asks.

Everyone Will Call This the Graham Family's Ambassador. Read the Statute. The Chair Has Been Empty for Twenty Months, Xi Lands in Eight Days, and the Job Was Never to Free Prisoners. It Was to Make Sure Someone in the Room Asks.

Cissie Graham Lynch is nominated to an office empty since January 2025. The statute says what it can and cannot do, and Xi Jinping arrives before any vote.

Everyone Will Call This the Day Washington Agreed to Pay for Worship. Read the Opinion. It Is Nearly Forty Pages About Whether a Federal Clerk May Decide What Counts as Worship.

Everyone Will Call This the Day Washington Agreed to Pay for Worship. Read the Opinion. It Is Nearly Forty Pages About Whether a Federal Clerk May Decide What Counts as Worship.

The Justice Department told HHS the old bar on spending grant money for sectarian worship, instruction or proselytization violates the Free Exercise Clause. What the opinion holds, what it concedes, and why a memo is not a ruling.

Everyone Will Call the Seven Clergy Arrested in Vermont Either Prophets or Trespassers. Read Employment Division v. Smith. It Calls Them Both, and That Is What Protects You.

Everyone Will Call the Seven Clergy Arrested in Vermont Either Prophets or Trespassers. Read Employment Division v. Smith. It Calls Them Both, and That Is What Protects You.

Seven clergy knelt in the doorway of the building that helps ICE pick its targets and said their faith required it. The Free Exercise Clause has never excused a blockade, and that is exactly why it can protect a sermon.

Everyone Will Call This a Church Autonomy Win. Read the Opinion. The Tenth Circuit Never Reached the Question.

Everyone Will Call This a Church Autonomy Win. Read the Opinion. The Tenth Circuit Never Reached the Question.

A unanimous Tenth Circuit panel ended the last tithing class action on Monday. It did it on the calendar, not the First Amendment, and the difference matters to your church.

Everyone Will Tell You the Second Circuit Just Made Religious Accommodation Harder. Read Bergin. It Moved the Question From What Your Boss Knew to What Your Boss Wanted.

Everyone Will Tell You the Second Circuit Just Made Religious Accommodation Harder. Read Bergin. It Moved the Question From What Your Boss Knew to What Your Boss Wanted.

The Second Circuit replaced notice with motive. That reads as a loss, and for one court officer it was. For the employee who never filed a form, it is the opposite.