« on: June 15, 2019, 09:44:54 PM »
Worth reading up on and learning about. Maybe all is not lost.
Yet.
Nemo
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/two-small-victories-for-religious-liberty-that-you-didnt-hear-aboutOpinion
Two small victories for religious liberty that you didn't hear about
by Nicole Russell
| June 14, 2019 05:36 PM
Despite the news earlier in the week that Jack Phillips is facing yet another silly discrimination lawsuit, in the ongoing fight for religious freedom, advocates are celebrating two victories this week.
On Monday, the Supreme Court dealt Michael Newdow, a well-known atheist, a blow when they refused to take on his case, which would remove “In God We Trust” from coins. Newdow developed a reputation for being combative against religious symbolism in the public sphere when he attempted to have the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools declared unconstitutional because it includes the phrase "under God."
In his latest efforts to strip God from America’s historical significance, Becket Fund attorney Eric Rassbach tweeted that “Dr. Newdow wants to remove the National Motto 'In God We Trust' from coins because he believes the phrase creates a 'religious establishment' — an official state church, like the one in England.” Newdow lost in the lower courts and appealed to the Supreme Court, but on Monday, the Supreme Court denied the appeal without comment.
In another victory, just announced Friday, the battle over tax-exempt housing allowances for ministers, which I’ve reported several times in these pages, is finally over. In Gaylor v. Mnuchin, the atheist group Freedom From Religion Foundation sued the IRS to end the parsonage allowance, a federal tax provision which allows churches, mosques, and synagogues to provide faith leaders a tax-free housing allowance to help them live in the communities they serve.
The Becket Fund, which represented the ministers, said, “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit recently rejected the atheists’ challenge and unanimously upheld the tax exemption as constitutional.” Thursday was the last day the Freedom From Religion Foundation could appeal to the Supreme Court, and they declined, thus ending the lawsuit by default.
Ironically, even though the Freedom From Religion Foundation claimed that this exemption was an excessive entanglement of the separation of church and state, the opposite is true. The Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, in its final decision, said without the exemption, “The IRS would need to interrogate ministers on the specifics of their worship activities [and] determine which activities constitute ‘worship.’” That is “excessive entanglement” between church and state.
Of course, both of these lawsuits were entirely petty, unnecessary, and absurd, wasting time and resources of the opposing side. Even though religious liberty continues to spur fights nationwide, it’s good to see such militant combatants against religious freedom get the wind knocked out of them every now and them in the court system.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
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