Becket Case Database

This is the United States Supreme Court’s latest look at the religious freedom issues surrounding school choice. The state of Maine offers tuition assistance to students in rural areas who choose to attend private schools over commuting to far-away ...

A federal mandate issued in 2016 required doctors to perform gender transition procedures on any patient, including a child, even if the doctor believed the procedure would be harmful. The mandate was struck down in court after it was challenged by ...

For centuries—long before this nation was founded—the Klickitat and Cascade Tribes of Yakama Nation have considered areas surrounding Mount Hood, Oregon, to be sacred sites. When in 2006 the U.S. Federal Highway Administration announced a project to expand ...

The State of New York has enacted a COVID vaccine mandate that will ban government employees and private healthcare workers with religious objections to the vaccine from working in their respected fields in New York and strip them of their ...

Fuller Theological Seminary is one of the world’s leading Christian graduate educational institutions. It is a multidenominational, international, and multiethnic seminary committed to training global Christian leaders for the fulfillment of their religious callings in Christian ministries. At the ...

The City of Boston allows community groups to hold flag-raising ceremonies and display flags of their choosing on one of the flagpoles near City Hall. After granting permits for nearly 300 different flag raisings, Boston issued its first permit denial in 2017 ...

Many Americans from many different religious traditions observe holy days such as Christmas or Yom Kippur, including, for some, a weekly Sabbath day. For Seventh-day Adventists, the Sabbath is observed from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, a time when they ...

Over millennia of human history and across many faith traditions, those condemned to death have been accompanied to their deaths by members of the clergy, who have prayed over them during their executions. And for 300 years, the American legal tradition ...

Oak Flat (known in Apache as Chi'chil Bildagoteel) is a sacred site in Arizona’s vibrant Tonto National Forest where Native Americans have gone to worship, pray, and conduct religious ceremonies since time immemorial. Recognizing its responsibility to Native peoples, ...

In October 2020, Young Israel of Tampa, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, submitted an ad to the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HART) seeking to advertise its annual celebration of Chanukah. HART rejected the ad because it was religious—and it has ...

After decades of allowing the clergy to minister to the condemned in the death chamber, Texas changed its rules in 2019, refusing to allow clergy to a Buddhist inmate. After the Supreme Court ruled that Texas must allow the right of ...

In 2017, the New York State Department of Financial Services mandated that employers cover abortions in their employee health insurance plans. Following the order, a diverse coalition of religious groups that includes contemplative goat-herding Anglican nuns asked the New York state ...

Father Alexander Belya claims that he was elected as a Vicar Bishop in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR). The Church and its leadership insist that he was not, and that he is not qualified to be a ...

The Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas serves families—primarily mothers and children—who would otherwise be left on the street. As a ministry of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, the Respite Center provides food, clothing, medical care, ...

One of the Navy’s most prominent admirals once said he would not tolerate any violation of the “rights or privileges” of sailors who grow beards, but today, Navy policy requires all sailors to be clean-shaven—even if their religious ...

Roncalli is a Catholic high school in Indianapolis that exists to transmit the Catholic faith to the next generation. To accomplish its religious mission, Roncalli asks all of its administrators, teachers, and guidance counselors to sign a contract agreeing to ...

A federal mandate issued in 2016 required doctors to perform gender transition procedures on any patient, including a child, even if the doctor believed the procedure would be harmful. An agency rule imposing the mandate was struck down in court after ...

In 1973, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade, reaching beyond the text of the Constitution to establish a right to abortion. Ever since, abortion advocates have waged proxy wars to expose and punish ...

After the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that all faiths have to be treated equally when it comes to the comfort of the clergy in the execution chamber, the Alabama Department of Corrections changed its policy from requiring a member of ...

Do death row inmates have the right to meet with a religious minister of their own faith in the moments before their death? This question has gone to the Supreme Court twice already this year. First, a Muslim prisoner in ...

For 25 years, the InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship student group at the University of Iowa has held Bible studies, hosted community discussions, and supported the wider community through acts of service. InterVarsity encourages and welcomes all students to be members, and ...

Agudath Israel of America – an Orthodox Jewish advocacy organization first founded in 1922 – and several of its affiliated synagogues located in New York City sued New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for his discriminatory “cluster action initiative.” Ostensibly a measure to target ...

La legislación internacional sobre derechos humanos protege los derechos de las iglesias y organizaciones religiosas de decidir quién enseña sus creencias a la siguiente generación. A diferencia de los Estados Unidos, muchas escuelas gubernamentales en Chile ...