Becket Case Database

St. Joseph is a Catholic parish located in St. Johns, Michigan. Since 1924, St. Joseph has operated a top-notch elementary school, St. Joseph Catholic School, that exists to pass on the Catholic faith to the next generation. Like Catholic parishes across ...

Parents in Maryland are fighting back against the Montgomery County Board of Education for forcing pre-K and elementary-aged children to read controversial books that promote a one-sided transgender ideology, encourage gender transitioning, and focus excessively on romance—with no parental ...

Since 1886, The Moody Bible Institute of Chicago has been on a mission to educate, train and equip men and women to proclaim the Gospel and promote the Christian faith. Drawn by this mission, students from the U.S. and countries ...

Founded in 1891, Seattle Pacific University is a Christian university fully committed to engaging the culture and changing the world by graduating people of competence and character, becoming people of wisdom, and modeling grace-filled community. Over the past few years, Seattle ...

In 2011, Gregory Holt, an inmate in an Arkansas state prison, sued for his right to grow a beard in accordance with his Muslim faith. Defended by Becket and Professor Douglas Laycock of the University of Virginia Law School, Holt won ...

The Sisters of Life are a Catholic religious community who devote themselves to the love of God by professing vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The Sisters also take a vow to protect the sacredness of human life, which they ...

Minnesota created the Post Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) program nearly 40 years ago to encourage and enable high school students to earn college credit tuition-free. Since 1985, the program has allowed thousands of students to enroll at universities throughout the state and ...

Faith Bible Chapel is a church in Arvada, Colorado that for over half a century has welcomed everyone to come and experience the presence of God and have an ever-growing relationship with Jesus. The church has a Christian school, Faith ...

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, ...

Bella Health and Wellness is a nonprofit Catholic healthcare clinic in Colorado that offers life-affirming, dignified healthcare to men, women, and children from all backgrounds and faith traditions. Consistent with its religious duty to honor the dignity of human life, ...

As a devout Catholic and occupational therapist for children with special needs, Debra Vitagliano felt called to offer compassionate, face-to-face support to women considering abortion. But a law in Westchester County, New York, made it illegal for Debra to engage ...

Temple Square is the spiritual seat of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving as both the venue for a significant amount of the Church’s ministerial activity and the home of the iconic Salt Lake City Temple. ...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear shuttered in-person teaching at K-12 schools, forcing private religious schools to stop meeting in person even if they were successfully following all public health recommendations regarding masking and social distancing. At the ...

In 2022, the Colorado legislature created a “universal” preschool funding program that is supposed to provide all parents of prekindergartners with 15 hours per week of free preschool education at a private or public school of their choice. Colorado’s Department of ...

For over a decade, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes student club met at San Jose Unified School District schools in California without incident. But when a teacher within the district singled out FCA’s religious beliefs for ridicule, goaded students ...

To help fulfill its religious obligation to care for those in need, the Diocese of Superior created and continues to operate the Catholic Charities Bureau. As the social ministry arm of the Diocese, Catholic Charities Bureau provides loving support to ...

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte operates Catholic schools to accomplish a religious mission – not only to provide a robust academic education, but to help form students in the Catholic faith. To accomplish that mission, the Diocese asks all its ...

Congress passed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to help parents and their children with disabilities obtain equal educational opportunities as their nondisabled peers. IDEA provides federal funding for special education programs in schools across the country to make ...

New Jersey is home to religious schools of many persuasions, reflecting the religious diversity of the state. These schools typically ask their teachers to follow a code of conduct to uphold the schools’ religious beliefs and practices. Among those schools ...

Mike and Kitty Burke are a loving couple from Massachusetts who want to welcome children into their family. They applied to become foster parents to care for vulnerable children in need of a loving home like theirs. Unfortunately, the Burkes ...

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 ...

Ever since the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Chevron v. National Resources Defense Council required courts to defer to government agencies when those agencies interpret federal law, Executive Branch officials have used that power to target religious believers. The Little ...

Despite a 2016 victory at the U.S. Supreme Court, an Executive Order, and a new rule that protects the Little Sisters of the Poor and other non-profit religious groups from the unconstitutional HHS mandate, the Little Sisters are still in ...

Catholic schools in Maine long provided an accessible education for rural families through the state’s tuition assistance program. Unfortunately, in 1982, faith-based schools, including St. Dominic Academy, were excluded from the program because they are religious. The Supreme Court overturned ...

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the second largest Lutheran denomination in the United States, maintains “ecclesiastical stewardship” over Lutheran universities across the country that offer students a high-quality education rooted in the Church’s biblical worldview. In 2020, one of these schools (...

Ever since the Supreme Court’s 1977 decision in Trans World Airlines v. Hardison severely limited protections for religious Americans in the workplace, businesses have used the precedent as a license to discriminate against employees who ask for accommodations to workplace ...

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 ...

Religious believers of many faiths have been protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which Congress passed with overwhelming support in 1993 to ensure that the federal government cannot unreasonably violate Americans’ religious freedom. Since then, many states have adopted ...

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 ...

Aekash Singh, Jaskirat Singh, and Milaap Singh Chahal are Marine Corps recruits and devout members of the Sikh faith. After being recruited for service in the Marines, all three were told they had to choose between their religious obligation to ...

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 ...

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 ...