“The Department of Homeland Security says it can’t tell the difference between a convert who deserves asylum and just another religious minority,” stated Becket Fund National Litigation Director Eric Rassbach. “But Mr. Salama’s relatives sure can — they repeatedly beat Mr. Salama, tried to kidnap Mr. Salama’s wife, vandalized their car, and tried to kill their baby daughter. They consider converts to be traitors to Islam and therefore deserving of death, and the police have been complicit in Mr. Salama’s torment. If Mr. Salama is forced to return to Egypt he will not survive.”

The Becket Fund’s brief argues that the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to deny asylum and send Salama back to Egypt completely disregarded copious evidence that details the persecution of both Christians and Christian converts from Islam in Egypt, as well as Mr. Salama’s own testimony of having faced violence and death threats. The brief also points out that asylum is required where governments refuse to protect religious minorities from private violence, and that under American law, being forced to conceal one’s faith is by itself grounds for asylum.

“In this country, if the local sheriff sits on his hands while a lynch mob attacks a minority, we’d call it an outrage and a crime,” said Rassbach. “But DHS doesn’t seem to care that Mr. Salama, as a convert to Christianity, faces the same fate should he be forced to return to Egypt.”

“We will represent, pro bono, any religious hospital or its personnel that HHS threatens because of their conscientious objection to abortion,” said Kevin “Seamus” Hasson, President of the Becket Fund. “And we will, if necessary, sue to block any such proposed policy.”

The letter pointed out that conscience has been protected in the medical profession in this country since Roe v. Wade. It further argued that the ACLU misinterprets the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (“EMTALA”), a law initially designed in part to protect the conscience rights of healthcare workers, and in doing so, overturns 25 years of caselaw.

“The ACLU has no business radically re-defining the meaning of ‘emergency health care,’” writes Becket Fund President Kevin “Seamus” Hasson. “Just as it has no business demanding that religious doctors and nurses violate their faith by performing a procedure they believe is tantamount to murder. Forcing religious hospitals to perform abortions not only undermines this nation’s integral commitment to conscience rights, it violates the numerous federal laws that recognize and protect those rights.”

Forcing Catholic or any religiously-affiliated hospital to perform abortions will only result in nationwide closures, thereby reducing access to healthcare for everyone, a blow the healthcare system could not weather. Legally forcing doctors and nurses to perform abortions in violation of their consciences would constitute a large step backwards for religious freedom and would turn this nation’s foundational commitment to conscience rights on its head.

“The Constitution does not require stripping government property of all religious symbols—especially when those symbols are privately owned, privately funded, and privately maintained,” said Luke Goodrich, Deputy National Litigation Director for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “When the government allows private speech on public property, it cannot discriminate between secular and religious speech and muzzle only the religious.”

In 1998, the Utah Highway Patrol Association—a private, secular, non-profit organization representing state troopers and their families—initiated, funded, and constructed memorial crosses for fallen Utah state troopers. Some of the crosses stand on public highway roadsides, near where each of the troopers died in the line of duty, in honor of the sacrifice they each made for their families and the State of Utah. American Atheists, an organization dedicated to promoting absolute separation of church and state, challenged the privately-owned memorials claiming that they violated the constitution because some of the crosses appeared on government land.

The Becket Fund filed a brief and argued the case in the Tenth Circuit on behalf of itself and the states of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. In the wake of this decision, any privately-erected, religious memorials on government property in those states could be vulnerable to a court challenge. This includes historical descansos in New Mexico.

“The private use of religious symbols is not the same as government establishment of religion,” added Goodrich. The case is likely to be appealed to the full Tenth Circuit court and then the Supreme Court.

This is an enormous about-face for the State, which has for several years maintained that it had to restrict the religious freedoms of pharmacies and pharmacists in order to ensure patient access to the morning after pill. In its filing today, however, the State concedes that allowing pharmacists with conscientious objections to refer patients to other pharmacies “is a time-honored pharmacy practice” that is “often in the best interest of patients, pharmacies, and pharmacists” and “do[es] not pose a threat to timely access to lawfully prescribed medications.” Based on the State’s representations, the Plaintiffs have agreed to allow the trial to be postponed while the Washington State Board of Pharmacy undertakes its rule-making process.  Washington State is capitulating less than a month after The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty<http://www.becketfund. org> helped Plaintiffs defeat Washington’s motion for summary judgment.

“This sends a clear signal to Governor Christine Gregoire that her bullying tactics are not acceptable. First she threatened to fire the members of the State Board of Pharmacy if they did not agree with her; then, she tried to pressure the pharmacy by joining a boycott against Ralph’s Thriftway,” said Eric Rassbach, National Director of Litigation for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. “It may come as a surprise to her, but conscientious and principled people like the owners and pharmacists of Ralph’s Thriftway are the backbone of this country.”

The controversy began in 2006 when the State Board of Pharmacy unanimously supported a rule protecting conscience for pharmacy workers. The Board voted in favor of a regulation allowing pharmacists with religious objections to refrain from dispensing Plan B and to refer patients to nearby suppliers. Governor Gregoire soon learned about the protection, publicly threatened to fire the Board’s members, and even called them late at night to lobby them. Matters escalated when the State’s Human Rights Commission insinuated that Board members could be held personally liable under gender discrimination laws if they supported the regulation.

Buckling under these pressures, the Board decided to reconsider the issue and instead adopted new language mandating pharmacies to stock and dispense the medication even when doing so violates their conscience. The Board adopted this regulation even though it admitted it found no evidence that anyone in the state had ever been unable to obtain Plan B (or any other time-sensitive medication) due to religious objections. The Becket Fund’s clients, a family owned pharmacy and two individual pharmacists, filed suit to prevent the new regulation from forcing them out of their profession.

“Americans should not be forced out of their professions solely because of their religious beliefs–but that is exactly what Washington State sought to do,” said Luke Goodrich, legal counsel at The Becket Fund. “The government should accommodate and protect the fundamental rights of all members of the medical profession, not punish some members because of their religious beliefs.”

Legal Voice, a group that intervened in the case to defend the regulations, has already decried Washington’s change, calling it an “outrage.”

The Becket Fund represents the plaintiffs along with Kristin Waggoner and Steven O’Ban of the Seattle firm Ellis, Li & McKinstry, PLLC.

The non-denominational evangelical Christian church wanted to expand its campus in exurban Niwot, five miles northeast of the city of Boulder. Boulder County refused to approve the permits to make the $30 million expansion, citing what it called the rural nature of the area. In 2006, the Church challenged that decision under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), a federal civil rights law which protects churches from unfair, unreasonable and burdensome land use regulations.

In 2008, a federal jury found that Bounder County violated the Church’s rights under RLUIPA by treating it on less than equal terms with secular land users, imposing unreasonable limitations on churches in the county, and placing a substantial burden on its religious exercise. Today, the Tenth Circuit upheld that verdict, finding that the jury’s verdict was reasonable and upholding the district court’s order that the church should be permitted to build its expansion. The lower court has also approved more than $1 million in attorneys’ fees and costs that the County will have to pay to the church.

“Boulder County is learning the hard way that churches have rights too. Federal civil rights law protects churches from unfair and arbitrary treatment by local governments, and there are real consequences for ignoring those laws” said Eric Rassbach, National Litigation Director of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented Rocky Mountain Christian Church in the case.

Tom Macdonald of Otten, Johnson, Robinson, Neff & Ragonetti, LLP of Denver, and Kevin Baine and Curtis Mahoney of Williams & Connolly, a Washington, D.C. law firm also represented the Church, with Baine arguing the appeal. Boulder County fought the case vigorously, hiring Robinson & Cole, a Boston land use law firm, and Professor Marci Hamilton of Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law in New York City to defend its appeal.

Becket Fund attorneys are the nation’s leading experts on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and its successor, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000. Both acts enforce constitutional principles derived from the First and Fourteenth Amendments and enjoy broad bipartisan support. In addition to conducting extensive litigation under the Act, they have written scholarly works concerning the Act and maintain a website dedicated to the Act, www.rluipa.org.

In 2009, Spartanburg County School District No. 7 was sued by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, along with the parents of two high school students, for implementing the South Carolina Released Time Credit Act. The law, passed in 2006, allows school districts to give elective credit to students who complete released time courses in religious instruction.

“Released time credit is a creative and legal way to increase parental choice,” says Eric Rassbach, Director of Litigation for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represents the school district. “South Carolina should not let the Freedom From Religion Foundation bully local school districts with the threat of lawsuits.”

For more than 50 years, courts have routinely held that off-campus released time programs do not violate the Constitution by promoting religion, but merely accommodate the wishes of students’ parents. Nationwide, more than 250,000 children in 32 states participate in released time programs each year. In South Carolina alone, more than 12,000 students attend released time classes each week.

In November 2009, McMaster released a press release lamenting that “liberals are using an increasingly sympathetic federal judiciary to re-write our Constitution to ban any and all religious expression in our schools, our government and the public square.” In a video hosted on his campaign website, Attorney General McMaster repeats a promise he has made to town councils and others around the state: “If the ACLU sues you, call me up. We’ll defend you. We’ll help you.”

The lawsuit has implications for released time programs across South Carolina and throughout the country. Shortly after filing the lawsuit, the president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation complained in an editorial that the 1952 Supreme Court decision that found released time constitutional “was a mistake.” Another plaintiff stated that he hopes to “set a precedent statewide, that no other school district would be able to offer credit for a religious course.”

Rassbach added, “We are confident that the Attorney General will do the right thing and join the fight on behalf of South Carolina parents and students.”

“It is shocking that a church would not be allowed to hold church services because they are not profitable to the City” said Lori Windham, Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund.

In 2007, the City of Leon Valley revised its zoning code to exclude churches from most of the city. It did so to maximize tax revenues. Auditoriums, convention centers, private clubs, and schools are free to locate in the city’s retail zones, but churches are not. When the Elijah Group bought an existing church building and tried to hold services there, it ran afoul of the city’s new zoning law.

A federal law, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, requires cities to treat churches on equal terms with secular assemblies. But Leon Valley says it can treat churches differently because they don’t produce revenue like other uses.

“The implications for churches across the state are enormous,” added Windham. “Leon Valley wants to set a precedent saying that cities can treat churches worse than secular assemblies simply because churches don’t generate enough tax revenue.”

The decision was so badly split that there was no one opinion on behalf of the Court. However, Justice Kennedy’s controlling plurality opinion rejected the argument that the cross is an unconstitutional government “endorsement” of religion, stating that “the Constitution does not oblige government to avoid any public acknowledgement of religion’s role in society.” Justice Kennedy also stated that the district court was wrong to strike down the federal statute transferring the land the cross stands on to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. His opinion was joined in full by Chief Justice Roberts, and in part by Justice Alito, who would not have remanded the case. Justices Scalia and Thomas would not have reached the merits at all, because they disagree that the plaintiff had standing to sue, though they would likely have reached a similar result on the merits. The dissenting Justices all agreed that the plaintiff had standing and would have upheld the lower court’s decision. On remand, the district court must reconcile these opinions and decide whether there is any reason for continuing the injunction it issued in 2002.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a law firm specializing in church-state issues, filed a brief before the Supreme Court defending the constitutionality of the Cross. The Becket Fund’s brief argued that a lone cross standing on private land in the desert sends different messages to different people and thus should not be interpreted as government approval of a particular religion.

“The Court’s ruling is simple common sense: Americans should be able to say what they want about religion on their own property—even if others disagree,” said Eric Rassbach, National Litigation Director of the Becket Fund. “It is unfortunate that the Court could not unify around a single rationale for its ruling. Nevertheless, the tea leaves the district court must read seem pretty clear to me.”

The decision leaves unanswered several important constitutional questions, such as the legal standard that should govern religious symbols on government property. Those questions may be answered soon, as several cases involving religious symbols are currently winding their way through the lower courts. One case—American Atheists vs. Duncan—involves roadside crosses in Utah memorializing fallen state troopers. In that case, the Becket Fund represents the states of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, arguing that the crosses are constitutional. The Supreme Court strongly hinted that it would agree, stating: “A cross by the side of a public highway marking, for instance, the place where a state trooper perished need not be taken as a statement of governmental support for sectarian beliefs.”

The Law on the Prevention of Blasphemy and Abuse of Religion imposes civil and criminal penalties, including up to five years imprisonment, for the practice of religions that “deviate from” Indonesia’s six official religions as interpreted by the government. Since it was first enacted in 1965 as part of an effort to root out Communism and unify Indonesia, the Blasphemy Act has been invoked against Muslims, Christians, indigenous Javanese, atheists, and others whose religious beliefs do not fall neatly into one of the six official religions as interpreted by the Indonesian government.

The review of the Act was highly controversial. Proponents of the Act argued that decriminalizing “deviant” forms of traditional religions would lead to public anger and disorder, and a break-down of Indonesia’s values and identity as a Muslim majority nation. Critics complained the law suppresses dissent and minorities, and of the law’s arbitrary enforcement. Religious believers have previously been sentenced to jail for whistling during prayers and praying in Bahasa-Indonesian instead of Arabic.

From Jakarta, Angela C. Wu, the Becket Fund’s International Law Director, commented, “This was a defining moment in a still developing democracy, and it’s a blow to all Indonesian citizens that their Constitutional Court was unwilling to defend their fundamental freedoms.” Wu said the Act is incompatible with Indonesia’s constitution and international treaty obligations, which guarantee freedom of expression and religion to all people.

“The Court reasoned that the state should make decisions about religious orthodoxy as a way of diffusing religious sensitivities and preventing the kind of ‘deviancy’ that upsets the public, but that’s just a policy of appeasement of violent extremists,” Wu stated. “This decision places more power in the hands of a state that has proven its unwillingness to defend religious dissenters in church burnings and destructions of Ahmadiyya mosques.”

In the opinion upholding the Blasphemy Act, the Court cited its unwillingness to pattern Indonesian law on U.S. Courts’ Establishment Clause jurisprudence, which the Court perceived as anti-religious and hostile to a role for religion in the country’s collective identity. Moreover, the Court declined to follow the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which it acceded in 2006, stating that the absence of religious values in the ICCPR makes the treaty irreconcilable with Indonesia’s national identity as a diverse, but religious country.

Eric Rassbach, National Litigation Director at the Becket Fund, commented that this precedent will be followed elsewhere because of the human rights community’s actual or perceived hostility to religion. He stated, “The Indonesian Court’s admitted noncompliance with the ICCPR is symptomatic of an increasing problem among countries with strong religious identities that are in the process of adopting human rights norms. The entire human rights project will fail unless religious voices are given a place at the table.”

The Oregon legislature moved to repeal the law after The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and a coalition of interfaith, civil rights, and bar association organizations urged the immediate repeal of the discriminatory Oregon law in a letter to state legislative leaders.

”The Becket Fund was indispensable in getting this KKK law repealed, especially by discrediting some of the wilder legal claims made by opponents of the repeal,” said Rajdeep Singh, Director of Law and Policy at The Sikh Coalition, a national Sikh civil rights organization. “Sikhs across the country are thankful for The Becket Fund’s stalwart defense of religious freedom for all.”

Led by the Oregon ACLU, many supporters of the ban on religious clothing claimed that allowing public school teachers to wear religious clothing would lead to the indoctrination of children in the classroom. In her Washington Post online column, Becket Fund Legal Fellow Asma Uddin took the ACLU to task for supporting a KKK law by using KKK tactics.

“Nebraska and Pennsylvania should follow Oregon’s example and repeal their religious clothing bans immediately,” said Eric Rassbach, National Litigation Director at the Becket Fund. “Anti-Catholic laws like these are Jim Crow’s lesser-known cousins, and they make everyone, not just Catholics, less free.”