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Religious Communities Protecting the right to live, teach and organize according to the dictates of a religion’s faith.
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Religious communities, institutions, and schools have the right to live, teach, and organize according to the dictates of their faith. Unfortunately, the rights of many religious communities are under attack, sometimes simply because they stand out from the rest of society. This includes the right of religious communities to select their own leaders and employees free from government interference. Becket’s landmark victory in the 9-0 Supreme Court decision Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC guarantees this right to religious communities.
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Religious Communities Cases
Use the simple filters to explore our cases in this practice area, or visit our Cases Page to search our entire database.
St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy
Colorado parents Dan and Lisa Sheley are raising their seven children in the Catholic faith. In 2022, Colorado promised families “universal” preschool funding—worth more than $6,000 per eligible child—to use at the public, private, or faith-based preschool of their choice. ...
Fellowship of Christian Athletes v. Board of Education of the Hopewell Valley Regional School District
Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) clubs—called “Huddles”—have empowered generations of students to freely live out their faith and serve all students on their campuses. In New Jersey’s Hopewell Valley school district, FCA Huddles met for years with ...
Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm v. Letitia James
For generations, Catholic healthcare ministries have cared for the sick, the elderly, and the dying across New York. Guided by the belief that every life is a precious gift, these ministries accompany those nearing death with medical skill, prayer, and ...
Union Gospel Mission of Yakima v. Brown
For nearly a century, Union Gospel Mission of Yakima has put its Christian faith into action by serving people facing homelessness, hunger, addiction, and illness across central Washington. To carry out that essential work, the Mission asks all its employees ...
Little Sisters of the Poor v. Azar
In August 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a federal mandate that required employers to provide services like the week-after pill in their health insurance plans, free of cost. The mandate did not exempt religious non-profits with religious ...
West Virginia v. B.P.J.
West Virginia passed the Save Women’s Sports Act to ensure girls’ athletic teams remain based on biological sex—preserving fairness, safety, and equal opportunity for female athletes. A federal appeals court blocked the law from taking effect after a ...
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops v. O’Connell
Catholic faithful worldwide have given annually to directly support the Pope and his charitable works for over a millennium. This annual donation is known as Peter’s Pence, after Saint Peter, and it helps support the Pope’s ministry. In 2020, ...
MoChridhe v. Academy of the Holy Angels
For over 175 years, the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis has operated Catholic schools to provide students with an excellent education rooted in the Catholic faith. To accomplish this mission, the Archdiocese asks the school’s personnel to uphold basic ...
McMahon v. World Vision
World Vision is a Christian ministry dedicated to providing humanitarian aid to vulnerable children and families around the globe. To carry out this life-saving mission, World Vision asks all its employees to uphold its religious beliefs in word and deed. ...
First Choice Women’s Resource Centers v. Davenport
First Choice Women’s Resource Centers is a pro-life, Christian ministry in New Jersey that offers free counseling, medical services, and material support to women facing unplanned pregnancies. In 2023, New Jersey tried to force First Choice to disclose how it ...
Belya v. Metropolitan Hilarion
Father Alexander Belya, a defrocked priest in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR), lost his bid to become bishop after Church leaders found him unqualified and suspended him pending an internal investigation. Rather than submit to investigation, Father ...
St. Vincent Catholic Charities v. Ingham County Board of Commissioners
For more than 40 years, St. Vincent Catholic Charities has been resettling refugee adults and families in the Lansing, Michigan area. St. Vincent helps refugees obtain housing, get needed medical care, find jobs, and build new lives safe from the dangers ...
Diocese of Albany v. Harris
In 2017, New York state mandated that employers pay for abortions in their employee health insurance plans. That included churches, soup kitchens, and nuns. Following the order, a diverse coalition of religious groups that includes contemplative goat-herding Anglican nuns asked the ...
Lorenzo v. San Francisco Zen Center
Religious groups should be free to choose and govern their ministers without government interference. But a California court has weakened that protection by letting a wage-and-hour lawsuit against San Francisco Zen Center move forward, forcing religious groups into piecemeal litigation ...
Southern Methodist University v. South Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church
The United Methodist Church founded Southern Methodist University (SMU) in 1911 to carry out its religious mission and ensured in SMU’s governing documents that the Church would continue to oversee SMU. For over a century thereafter, the Church played a ...
East Texas Baptist University & Houston Baptist University v. Azar
When a government mandate threatened their Baptist beliefs, two Texas universities were forced to court to defend their religious freedom. The 2011 HHS Mandate forced religious non-profits like the to either violate their faith-driven mission by providing services, such as the ...
Reaching Souls International, Inc. v. Azar
In August 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a federal mandate that required employers to provide services like the week-after pill in their health insurance plans. The mandate forced evangelical Christian ministries like Reaching Souls International, Truett-McConnell College, ...
Garner v. Southern Baptist Convention
Churches strive to protect their flocks from wayward shepherds. And many religious organizations require their cooperating churches to take that duty seriously. That’s true here, where the Southern Baptists Convention (SBC) requires cooperating churches to align with its Biblical ...
Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission
Catholic Charities Bureau provides loving support to people with disabilities, the elderly, and those in poverty throughout the Diocese of Superior. But the Wisconsin Supreme Court told Catholic Charities that its ministry to those in need was not sufficiently religious—...
National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Treto
Illinois law forces pro-life healthcare professionals to tell women about the “benefits” of abortion and to refer them to abortion providers. A group of pro-life pregnancy centers and doctors sued the state, and a lower court recently blocked the “benefits-discussion” ...
Winder v. United States
Military chaplains play a unique role in the lives of servicemembers. They lead worship, offer spiritual counsel, walk with troops through stress, trauma, deployment, and loss, and provide the kind of pastoral care people can get only from a religious ...
Weems v. Association of Related Churches
Churches should be free to choose their leaders without being dragged into court. Yet a pastor sued a national church network and two of its leaders over his removal from his former church. He claimed they conspired with his former ...
General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists v. Horton
The Seventh-day Adventist Church, led by its General Conference, is a Christian denomination with over 22 million members worldwide. To ensure that the Church continues to uphold its religious mission, the General Conference requires all of its employees to be faithful ...
McRaney v. The North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention
Religious groups should be free to choose their leaders without being dragged into court. Yet a former Baptist leader, after losing his job over disagreements over the direction of a shared ministry, filed a lawsuit against the North American Mission ...
United Faculty of Saint Leo v. NLRB and Saint Leo University
Founded by Benedictine monks in 1889, Saint Leo University has long offered a Catholic education rooted in faith, community, and service. In 2020, Saint Leo adopted a new model of shared governance with its faculty members to foster a stronger sense of ...
Islamic Center of Murfreesboro v. Rutherford County
It was supposed to be like any other house of worship. In 2010, a Muslim community in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, began building a mosque and community center to accommodate its growing congregation. Little did they know, their innocuous plans would incite a ...
The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod v. Concordia University Texas
After a hard experience in Europe, shaped by State coercion and religious prosecution, the founders of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod came to the United States in the early 1800s seeking the liberty to run their own church, free from ...
YU Pride Alliance v. Yeshiva University
Yeshiva University is America’s oldest Jewish institution of higher education. “Yeshiva” literally means a school for studying the Talmud—and Talmud studies remain at the heart of everything Yeshiva does. Most undergraduate students spend up to five hours each ...
Huntsman v. Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Temple Square is the spiritual seat of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, serving as the home of its international religious ministry and the setting of its iconic Salt Lake City Temple. In the early 2000s, Church leaders ...
St. Joseph Parish v. Nessel
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 ...
Fellowship of Christian Athletes v. District of Columbia
Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) clubs—called huddles—have helped students across the world to live out their faith on and off the field for decades. Every huddle welcomes all students, treating them with respect and kindness as people made ...
Billard v. Diocese of Charlotte
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 ...
Minnesota Churches' Challenge to COVID-19 Executive Order
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, retail therapy was allowed to resume in the State of Minnesota, but not spiritual healing, according to Governor Tim Walz’s May 13, 2020 executive order. On May 13, Governor Walz announced that retailers could open ...
Kuilema v. Calvin University
Calvin University is a world-class Christian university in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that prepares students to engage the world through faith, curiosity, and conviction. To accomplish this mission, Calvin asks its administrators and professors to uphold its beliefs in word and ...
Gloucester County v. G.G.
Title IX was enacted in 1972 to promote equality for men and women in education by prohibiting discrimination on the basis of “sex.” But in May 2016, the U.S. Department of Education unilaterally...
HotChalk v. Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod
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 (...
Garrick v. Moody Bible Institute
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 ...
Pleasant View Baptist Church v. Beshear
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 ...
United States of America v. State of Texas
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, ...
InterVarsity Christian Fellowship v. Wayne State University
The Intervarsity Christian Fellowship student group has been at the Michigan’s Wayne State University campus for over 75 years, holding Bible studies, hosting discussions on important campus issues, and providing a community for all students. Its goal has always been ...
Lebovits v. Cuomo
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio have unnecessarily, unscientifically, and wrongly targeted Orthodox Jews for a series of shutdown orders ostensibly designed to restrict COVID-19. These orders were overbroad and targeted all members ...
Shlomo Hyman v. Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey
Rosenbaum Yeshiva of North Jersey is an Orthodox Jewish day school in the town of River Edge, New Jersey. In 2019, Rosenbaum Yeshiva announced in a letter to parents that, after consulting with religious experts, it had parted ways with a ...
Crisitello v. St. Theresa School
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 ...
Sisters of Life v. McDonald
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 ...
Gaddy v. Corporation of the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Three former members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are suing the Church in federal court, accusing it of propounding false beliefs and misrepresenting its religious history and practices to defraud members of donations. Becket filed a ...
Gagliardi v. The City of Boca Raton, Fla.
Since 2007, the Chabad of East Boca Raton has been forced to defend its right to build a new synagogue against a hostile and well-funded opposition. In 2015, after years of thorough planning, and while enduring anti-Semitic threats and attacks, the Chabad ...
Starkey v. Roncalli High School and Archdiocese of Indianapolis
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 ...
Payne-Elliott v. Archdiocese of Indianapolis
In 2017 a high school teacher at Cathedral Catholic High School in Indianapolis violated his agreement with the school, and centuries of Church teaching, by entering a same-sex civil union. After two years of deliberation, the Archdiocese of Indianapolis informed the ...
Fitzgerald v. Roncalli High School and Archdiocese of Indianapolis
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 ...
Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo
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 ...