In the previous term that began in October 2023, no religious liberty cases were on the Supreme Court docket, according to Mark Rienzi, president and CEO of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit public interest law firm.

“That’s a big shift from the past dozen terms or so, where we had a pretty steady flow of religious liberty cases,” he said in a recent phone briefing about the Supreme Court term.

Becket represents a group of Western Apache and their allies who are fighting to stop the construction of a mine in Arizona at Oak Flat, also known as Chi’chil Bildagoteel, where Indigenous people have worshipped for centuries.

Earlier this year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to stop the federal government from transferring Oak Flat to Resolution Copper Mining in a swap for conservation land.

The plaintiffs, who formed a coalition called Apache Stronghold, allege their rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act were violated.

The act bars the government from substantially burdening a person’s exercise of religion except in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest — and only if an action is the least restrictive means of furthering that interest.

The lower courts have found there is no burden on the plaintiffs, and now the mining company plans to turn Oak Flat into a 2-mile-wide pit, Rienzi said.

He said everyone should be concerned when a fellow citizen’s rights are violated “because if the federal government can say it’s no burden to blow up a Native American sacred site, then next time it would be no burden to blow up yours.”

Nazarite vow on cutting hair

As a devout Rastafarian, Damon Landor took the Nazarite vow, the biblical oath taken by Samson that requires him to abstain from cutting his hair.

By the time he began serving a five-month sentence at a Louisiana prison in 2020, Landor’s dreadlocks were almost down to his knees. He was allowed to wear a Rasta cap over his long hair and had no problems until three weeks before the end of his term, when he was transferred to another prison.

Landor brought with him a copy of a 2017 decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that said Louisiana’s policy of cutting the hair of Rastafarians violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, and he showed it to the intake guard.

The act prohibits regulations that impose a “substantial burden” on the religious exercise of persons confined to institutions.

The guard threw the papers in the trash and summoned the warden, who asked Landor if he had documentation about his religious beliefs from his sentencing judge, according to his appeal. He did not, but offered to contact his lawyer to get the documents.

But on instructions of the warden, Landor was handcuffed to a chair and two guards held him down while a third one shaved him bald, the appeal says.

After he served his time, Landor filed suit accusing the prison officials of violations of law.

In a ruling dismissing the claims, a judge said that based on precedent, the law does not provide for damages against individual state officials. A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit upheld the dismissal, saying they “emphatically condemn” Landor’s mistreatment, but that he could not seek money damages from them.

Landor’s appeal notes the Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that government officials can be sued in their individual capacity for damages for violations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and that the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act relevant language is identical.

Ending union representation

Avraham Goldstein and four other professors at the City University of New York who are Jews and Zionists resigned in protest from the Professional Staff Congress/CUNY after the academic labor union issued a resolution in 2021 supporting the Palestinian people.

The resolution encouraged support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, which it referred to as an “apartheid state,” and the professors viewed the statement as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.

The professors are no longer members of Professional Staff Congress, but under New York state law, when a union is certified by the state Public Employment Relations Board, it is the exclusive representative of all employees in the negotiating unit.

In addition, the law governing public-sector collective bargaining in the state was amended in 2018 to reduce the duties public-sector unions owe to nonmembers.

Seeking to disassociate from union, the professors filed suit in 2022 alleging that it continued to advocate positions that singled them out for hatred and harassment based on their religious beliefs and ethnic identity.

A sixth professor, who is not Jewish and disagreed with many of PSC’s positions and its “political radicalization,” joined the lawsuit, which was filed by the Fairness Center and the National Right to Work Foundation on behalf of the plaintiffs.

The case was dismissed by a trial judge and the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the ruling, leading the plaintiffs to petition the Supreme Court to hear the case.

Dissociating is a common way to express displeasure with the conduct or positions of the person or entity being shunned, the appeal says, noting that the First Amendment protects the rights of individuals, and especially religious dissenters, to disaffiliate themselves from associations and speech they abhor.”

Religious or charitable purposes?

The justices are being asked to tackle the question of whether the operations of the social services arm of the Catholic Diocese of Superior in Wisconsin are “religious” or “charitable.” The answer would determine whether Catholic Charities Bureau qualifies for a tax exemption for nonprofit organizations that operate “primarily for religious purposes.”

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has held Catholic Charities’ activities are not “typical” religious activities because it serves and employs non-Catholics, does not “attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith” and its services to the poor and needy also could be provided by secular organizations.

Catholic Charities and its nonprofit sub-entities say because they operate out of the religious motive of the Catholic Church of serving the underserved, their primary purposes are religious. The bureau runs dozens of programs in service to the elderly, the disabled, the poor and those in need of disaster relief, the appeal says.

In New York, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany and other religious ministries are challenging the state’s mandate that they subsidize abortions through their employee health insurance plans.

The regulation provides an exemption for religious organizations that have the purpose of inculcating religious values and primarily employ and serve people of the same religious persuasion. But religious organizations that have a broader purpose, such as serving the poor, or that employ or serve members of other faiths or no faith, are not exempt.

COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates

In Arizona, five former employees of Raytheon Technologies Corp. are seeking to reverse the dismissal of their lawsuit alleging religious discrimination and retaliation in connection with the company’s COVID-19 vaccine or mask mandates.

Four plaintiffs claim they were fired or forced to quit when the company either denied their request for religious accommodation from the mandate or failed to provide workable options. The fifth plaintiff received accommodations for vaccination and testing, but says she was fired over a dispute about the sharing of her medical results.

A judge dismissed the suit, and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal, saying the employees failed to show there were non-religious workers who had declined to comply with the vaccination requirement or with the exemption conditions but who were not subject to adverse consequences.

Other appeals involving COVID-19 were filed by Grace Bible Fellowship, which is challenging Colorado’s authority to impose public health restrictions on houses of worship, and by seven residents of Carlisle, Mass., who challenged since-rescinded mask mandates.

LGBTQ-inclusive storybooks

Other cases with religious freedom implications include a suit by a group of Muslim, Jewish and Christian parents in Montgomery County, Md., who want opt-outs for their children when elementary school teachers read LGBTQ-inclusive storybooks about gender transitions and sexuality.

The parents, who are not challenging the curriculum, argue that compelling the children to participate in instruction that conflicts with the parents’ religious beliefs violates the Free Exercise Clause.

Ads on buses

The Supreme Court has been asked to hear an appeal about a Florida transit agency’s ban on advertising.

Young Israel of Tampa, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue, sought to advertise its annual Hanukkah celebration on public buses run by the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority, but its ad was rejected. The rejection was based on a HART policy banning ads that “primarily promote a religious faith or religious organization.”

In its appeal, Young Israel says HART accepts a wide variety of advertisements, including for secular holiday events, and that its refusal to allow its ad on the buses violates the First Amendment’s prohibition on religious viewpoint discrimination.

Other religious issues

Also seeking review of their cases are a Muslim father in Connecticut who claims a judge terminated his custody of his children so they could be converted to Christianity by adoptive parents and a New York psychiatrist who says a Catholic hospital discriminated against him by refusing to hire him because his Romanian Orthodox religion prohibits him from agreeing to recognize and adhere to the employer’s religious views.