Becket Case Database

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 ...

In 2023, Maryland’s Montgomery County Board of Education took away parental notice and opt-outs for storybooks that promote gender transitioning, Pride parades, and pronoun preferences to children as young as three and four. A coalition of religious parents, including Muslims, ...

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 ...

Daniel Negusie, an Eritrean Christian, was imprisoned in inhumane conditions for his refusal to serve in his country’s military. While in prison, he was punished and threatened with death for his...

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 ...

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, ...

Eleanor McCullen has spent decades exercising her religion by offering help and support to women in need outside of abortion clinics. Knowing that women often have abortions when they feel they have no place to turn for love and support, ...

Families in Oklahoma, especially those in rural areas with poorly performing schools, are looking for the best school options for their children. The Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa have long operated schools to offer an education ...

As dedicated foster parents, Sharonell Fulton and Toni Simms-Busch are heroes to countless kids. Between them, they have welcomed more than 45 foster kids into their loving homes—the majority of whom came from disadvantaged communities and experienced severe trauma. To ...

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 ...

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 ...

A group of homeless people sued the city of Grants Pass, Oregon, in 2018 over local laws that penalize sleeping on public property. In 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled against Grants Pass, reasoning that its ...

After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, the federal government attempted to expand abortion access by reinterpreting an old law, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA). This new EMTALA guidance does something unprecedented: it requires ...

Chike Uzuegbunam, a student at Georgia Gwinnett College, was threatened with arrest for peacefully sharing his Christian faith in a campus “free speech zone.” Chike sued the school for silencing the message that Chike and his friends wanted to share ...

Lorie Smith started her website and graphic design business, 303 Creative, to work on projects consistent with her religious beliefs. But when a Colorado law prevented her from expanding her services to include wedding websites—since she can’t in good ...

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

Santa Clara County has ordered all churches to remain closed during Lent and Easter, contrary to the United States Supreme Court’s order in South Bay Pentecostal Church v. Newsom (“South Bay II”). On February 5, the U.S. Supreme Court ...

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Kentucky Governor Beshear on November 18, 2020, closed K-12 classrooms, forcing all private religious schools to engage in online-only instruction. At the same time, however, he has allowed secular institutions—like theatres, offices, and even gambling ...

Do death row inmates have the right to meet with a religious minister of their own faith in the moments before their death? This question has gone to the Supreme Court twice already this year. First, a Muslim prisoner in ...

After the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that all faiths have to be treated equally when it comes to the comfort of the clergy in the execution chamber, the Alabama Department of Corrections changed its policy from requiring a member of ...

The State of New York enacted a COVID vaccine mandate that has banished government employees and private healthcare workers with religious objections to the vaccine from working in their respected fields in New York and stripped them of their unemployment ...

U.S. citizen Yonas Fikre sued the FBI in 2013 for placing him on the No Fly List. While his case was pending, the FBI removed Fikre from the list and argued that his case should be dismissed. Fikre said the ...

The state of Indiana launched an investigation in 2021 into the home of Mary and Jeremy Cox, Catholic parents who would not refer to their son using pronouns and a name inconsistent with his biological sex. A state court then removed ...

Meet Samantha Elauf    Samantha Elauf is a fashion blogger who takes her faith seriously. When she was 17, she sought a job at her local mall’s Abercrombie & Fitch. She knew the company dress...

In a case involving the constitutionality of a cross memorial in the Mojave Desert, Becket’s amicus brief argued that the court of appeals should be reversed, because the plaintiff lacked...

Everyone is welcome at Good News Community Church. Services are held Sundays. The Church encourages Christian fellowship through Bible study, religious song, and prayer. Its mission is outreach,...

The state of Missouri wants to make sure children run on safe playgrounds – unless they attend a religious school. The Trinity Lutheran Church Learning Center is a Christian preschool that wanted to...

In 2011, Abdul Muhammad, an inmate in an Arkansas state prison, sued in federal court for the right to wear a beard in accordance with his Muslim beliefs. After he lost in federal court, Becket and Professor Douglas Laycock of University ...

In March of 2000, atheist Michael Newdow sued on behalf of his daughter to strip the words “under God” from the Pledge recited by students in California public schools.Terence Cassidy represented...

For months, California permitted Hollywood film studios and large retailers to open their doors, often to hundreds of people mingling in enclosed spaces. But at the same time, the Golden State prevented houses of worship from opening their doors to ...

As a practicing Seventh-day Adventist, Mitche Dalberiste’s religious beliefs keep him from working from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. Many employers take voluntary action to respect employees’ Sabbath, recognizing how central this practice is to many faiths. However, after ...

For 10 years, inmate Lester Smith has been fighting for his right to wear a beard in accordance with his Muslim religious beliefs. Even though 38 states and the Bureau of Prisons allow prisoners to have untrimmed beards, the Georgia Department of ...

The City of Boston allows community groups to hold flag-raising ceremonies and display flags of their choosing on one of the flagpoles near City Hall. After granting permits for nearly 300 different flag raisings, Boston issued its first permit denial in 2017 ...

Coach Kennedy, a former high school football coach, was at the Supreme Court to defend his right to kneel in brief, quiet prayer at midfield after games. Becket filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case, arguing that religious expression is ...

In 1973, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade, reaching beyond the text of the Constitution to establish a right to abortion. Ever since, abortion advocates have waged proxy wars to expose and punish ...

This is the United States Supreme Court’s latest look at the religious freedom issues surrounding school choice. The state of Maine offers tuition assistance to students in rural areas who choose to attend private schools over commuting to far-away ...

Many Americans from many different religious traditions observe holy days such as Christmas or Yom Kippur, including, for some, a weekly Sabbath day. For Seventh-day Adventists, the Sabbath is observed from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday, a time when they ...

Over millennia of human history and across many faith traditions, those condemned to death have been accompanied to their deaths by members of the clergy, who have prayed over them during their executions. And for 300 years, the American legal tradition ...

Is a specialty license plate considered official government speech? And can the government restrict individual viewpoints even when they are highly offensive? To both questions, Becket said no. In 2009, the Texas Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans submitted a ...

Citing confidentiality concerns, Americans for Prosperity Foundation (AFP) refused to submit confidential donor information on a State of California tax form. When the State demanded they submit this “Schedule B” information, AFP sued along with the Thomas More Law Center, ...

Harvey Sossamon was a Texas inmate who alleged that his religious exercise was burdened because he was denied access to religious services in prison. Sossamon sued prison officials in their individual capacities arguing that the denial of access to religious ...

In its 2012 ruling in Hosanna-Tabor, the U.S. Supreme Court protected the right of religious groups to choose those who teach the faith to the next generation, free from government interference. This includes schools like St. James Catholic School, a ...

Our Lady of Guadalupe School is committed to providing a faith-based education rooted in the Catholic tradition. In 2015 when Ms. Morrissey-Berru, a teacher responsible with leading students in daily prayer and preparing them for mass, began to exhibit poor performance, ...

George Ricks is a 59-year-old father of four who has been employed in the construction industry his entire adult life. In 2014, he decided to become an independent contractor. But in Idaho, where George lives, it is a crime to work ...

In 2017, Brandi Levy, a freshman student at Mahanoy High School, was told that she did not make the public school’s varsity cheerleading team. Frustrated, she vented privately in an off-color social media message sent to some of her friends. ...

The Montana Tax Credit Scholarship Program allowed Montanans a tax credit for $150 of their contributions to a privately-run scholarship program. However, the Montana Department of Revenue refused to implement the program, citing the state’s Blaine Amendment, an archaic anti-religious ...

Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School operates a K-8 school in Redford, Michigan according to biblical teachings. In 2007, after being dismissed for insubordination, disruptive conduct, and threatening to sue the church – all in violation of church teachings – a commissioned minister ...

Darrell Patterson, a Seventh-day Adventist and longtime dedicated Walgreens employee, had a long-standing agreement with his supervisor at Walgreens—because he could not work on Saturday, the Adventist Sabbath, others would cover any shifts that occurred during that time. But ...

Support Circle is a non-profit clinic and counseling center in the San Francisco Bay Area that provides pregnancy testing, ultrasounds, counseling, and support to women looking for resources as they face unplanned pregnancies. In 2011, the City of San Francisco passed ...

In 2012, a government mandate threatened Wheaton College, a Christian school and one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country, with crippling fines unless it violated its religious beliefs. Thanks to Becket, after a five-year court battle, in February 2018 ...