Becket Case Database

A new Louisiana law requires state public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. Schools have broad flexibility in designing the displays, and no public funds are needed for their installation. This kind of passive religious symbolism in the public ...

Texas law permits religious leaders and judges to officiate weddings. A secular humanist group filed a lawsuit seeking to have its secular celebrants allowed to officiate as well, even though they are admittedly not religious and generally antireligious. Becket filed ...

Oak Flat (known in Apache as Chi'chil Biłdagoteel) 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 ...

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 ...

In 2022, the Colorado legislature created a “universal” preschool funding program intended 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 Early Childhood, ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Cathy Miller, a faithful Christian and owner of Tastries Bakery, has created custom wedding cakes and baked goods for over a decade. In 2017, a same-sex couple asked Cathy to design a custom cake for their wedding—something she could not ...

Damon Landor’s religious dreadlocks, a crucial symbol of his Rastafarian faith, were forcibly shaved by Louisiana prison officials while he was imprisoned. After being released, Damon sued for money damages under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

In 2017, New York state 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 courts to protect them from ...

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—...

Nick Rolovich is a college football coach and practicing Catholic. He served as head coach of the Washington State University (WSU) Cougars for nearly two seasons, where he earned respect for his leadership, work ethic, and commitment to his players ...

Catholic priests in Washington face an impossible choice between obeying their faith or complying with the law. A newly enacted state law mandates that priests report instances of abuse or neglect that they hear about in the sacrament of confession, ...

Recent years have seen an explosion in the number of children identifying as transgender. Many of these children have been led down a path of “gender transition”—enduring a regime of drugs, hormones, and surgeries that often results in profound ...

Recent years have seen an explosion in the number of children identifying as transgender. Many of these children have been led down a path of “gender transition”—enduring a regime of drugs, hormones, and surgeries—which often results in profound ...

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 ...

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. A ...

For decades, Catholic schools like St. Dominic Academy offered rural families a vital education through Maine’s tuition assistance program. But in 1982, the state barred all religious schools. Though the Supreme Court overturned this ban in 2022, Maine preemptively revised its ...

Father Alexander Belya is a now-defrocked priest in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR). In the midst of an internal ecclesiastical uproar about whether he met the qualifications necessary to be elected bishop, Father Alexander’s diocesan leaders ...

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 ...

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 ...

A new Louisiana law requires state public school classrooms to display the Ten Commandments. Schools have broad flexibility in designing the displays, and no public funds are needed for their installation. This kind of passive religious symbolism in the public ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Mike and Jen Lasche are a loving Christian couple with a passion for helping children in need. For over ten years, they served as foster parents in New Jersey, offering love, support, and stability to vulnerable kids. Unfortunately, in 2018, the ...

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 ...

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 ...