By a slim 8-6 margin, the Virginia Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections voted yesterday to approve an amendment to the state's constitution that would, among other things, provide broad public school students a sweeping right of exemption from assignments and activities they object to on religious grounds.

The amendment would...ensure that students could express their beliefs about religion “free from discrimination based on the religious content of their work.”

Chris Freund, a spokesman for the Family Foundation of Virginia, said the organization has pushed for the measure because of bans and legal battles involving invocations at public meetings or whether high school football teams may pray in the locker room before a game.

“It’s kids not being able to sing a song at graduation because the word ‘God’ is in the song,” Freund said. “I think Virginians are tired of it.”

But critics suggested the bill would be used to enshrine Christianity in schools and public life. Sen. Janet D. Howell (D-Fairfax) said the measure appears intended to sneak creationism into the schoolhouse.

Of course, if the invocation before a public meeting, prayer before a football game, or religious song at graduation, violates the First Amendment's guaranty of religious freedom, it doesn't much matter what Virginians do to their own constitution. Such activities, where prohibited now, would remain so. The same goes for the other major plank of the amendment: a provision allowing prayer on public property. Supporters of this measure rarely acknowledge that such prayer would still be protect by, and subject to, the First Amendment, but it would be.

For some reason, and I'll leave it to you to speculate, that plain truth is not stopping them from moving forward with this plan to alter the state's constitution. You can read Senate Joint Resolution 287 here. Stay tuned.

Baptist Joint Committee Executive Director Brent Walker received the Abner McCall Religious Liberty Award in a ceremony last week in Waco, Texas, where he was also inducted into the Baylor Alumni Hall of Fame.

The award honors individuals with close ties to Baylor who “like the award’s namesake … have demonstrated the courage and dedication to defend and advocate for religious liberty.”
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In his remarks, Walker lauded McCall for being a strong champion of religious liberty and the Baptist Joint Committee and for helping the organization “negotiate those difficult days of separation from the Southern Baptist Convention.” He was “instrumental in garnering the support of Texas Baptists that continues today,” Walker said.

 Read all about this well-deserved honor here.

A principal in Prince George's County, Maryland has found a unique way to accommodate the prayer needs of a growing Muslim student population. That's the good news. The bad news - at least it seems like a questionable idea to me - is that not all Muslim students may take advantage of the prayer time; only the ones with good enough grades.

At Parkdale High School, about 10 Muslim students get out of class for about eight minutes each day to pray together on campus, said Principal Cheryl J. Logan. Another student is working hard to raise his grades so he too can join the group of students, who belong to the school’s chapter of the Muslim Students’ Association, she said.

Is this the right answer? If Muslim students can be accommodated, should some be left out? Is prayer time an appropriate reward? Like extra recess?

The Texas Legislature may try to take on the contraception mandate controversy with the state's tax code. HB 649 would offer tax breaks for businesses that are fined by the federal government for refusing to provide contraception coverage on religious grounds.

Courthouse News Service has more:

HB 649 would exempt businesses that invoke religious reasons from all state taxes if they are forced to pay punitive fines for violating the contraception mandate.

To qualify for the exemption, a business must provide employees with a health insurance plan, must refuse to cover emergency contraception under Obamacare, must have been fined after Jan. 1, 2013, for failure to comply and must have paid the fine.     

"Exempting them from state taxes is the least we can do to help them weather this storm," [State Rep. Jonathan] Stickland said in his statement. "I hope other states follow suit and I hope the courts step up to protect religious liberty and strike down this unconstitutional mandate."

Would a bill targeting only religious reasons, with the explicit purpose of undermining a federal law, be constitutional?

A California law prohibits for-profit companies from discriminating based upon religion in hiring and firing. Little Oaks School, a for-profit religious school owned by Calvary Chapel, is challenging that law, claiming the First Amendment guarantees their right to fire 2 teachers who refuse to provide proof of faith.

"The question is ultimately, do the nondiscrimination rights of the teachers under state law trump the religious rights of the school under federal law?" Richard Kahdeman, a lawyer representing the church and school, told the Star.

Lawyers for Epps, Yong & Coulson, the firm representing the teachers, said the state's Fair Employment and Housing Act has been upheld in hundreds of cases in state and federal courts. In a prepared statement obtained by the newspaper, they portrayed the school's lawsuit as a desperate attempt to "avoid the consequences of their illegal and discriminatory practices."

 The lawsuit filed by the school seeks to prevent the teachers from suing for employment discrimination.

Earlier this week, a federal judge in Pennsylvania refused to dismiss a challenge to a Ten Commandments monument in the Kensington-Arnold School District. The decision means the suit arguing the monument violates the separation of church and state will continue.

The district’s position is that the monument, donated by the New Kensington branch of the Fraternal Order of Eagles in the late 1950s in connection with the release of “The Ten Commandments” movie, is a historic landmark with secular components that should be allowed to remain.
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“Establishment Clause challenges are all unique and driven by the particular facts of the case,” [Judge] McVerry wrote in Tuesday’s order. “(Through the discovery phase), the parties will have ample opportunity to build a sufficient factual record that permits this Court to meaningfully apply the decisional law to this difficult, context-driven task.”

Georgia has recently joined a growing list of states with a controversial school funding program that funnels public money to private and religious institutions in the form of tax credits.The NYTimes reports that the scheme, which is essentially a voucher program, is funding schools that discriminate in ways public schools never could.

Steve Suitts, the vice president of the foundation and the author of the report, said that as many as a third of the schools in the scholarship program have strict antigay policies or adhere to a religious philosophy that holds homosexuality as immoral or a sin.

As a result, his report says, public money is being spent by private educational institutions that “punish, denounce and even demonize students in the name of religion solely because they are gay, state that they are homosexual, happen to have same-sex parents or guardians, or express support or tolerance for gay students at school, away from school or at home.”

Public and private schools are fundamentally different in ways we should seek to preserve, not blur through funding schemes. Private schools have every right to teach religious beliefs, and even to indoctrinate students, but public money should not be used to enforce religious beliefs at the expense of some students. Americans United has more.

Two interesting claims of workplace religious discrimination have reached a conclusion.

In one, Burger King settled the claim of a worker who refused the employee dress code because her Pentecostal beliefs require her to wear dresses or skirts. The fast food chain agreed to go through corporate training on workplace accommodation of religious beliefs and to pay the plaintiff $25,000. You can read the consent decree here (pdf).

In the other, a judge dismissed an EEOC complaint (pdf)  on behalf of a Rent-A-Center employee whose religious beliefs prohibited him from working on Saturdays. The court found the company had demonstrated an "undue hardship" in accommodating those beliefs.

The Court will not require RAC to undertake the accommodation. Leaving the store without a Store Manager on Saturdays would cause an “undue hardship” to RAC by “impair[ing] [critical] functions”—it would deprive the store of the significant supervisory, managerial, customer-care and other functions that RAC Store Managers are charged with at the very time when these functions are most needed. Because of the importance of the position, the centrality of Saturdays in RAC’s weekly cycle, and of RAC’s scheduling policy reflects these two facts by requiring all Store Managers to work on Saturdays, this Court is satisfied that the evidence shows that leaving the position blank on Saturdays imposes “more than a de minimis cost” on the conduct of RAC’s business.

Bible courses in many Texas schools are falling short of the safeguards set by the legislature. So says a report by the Texas Freedom Network. The difficulty of ensuring constitutionally sound courses on the Bible - those that avoid endorsing or promoting religion while studying the text for its literary and cultural significance - is something I've talked about several times here at the BJC Blog. Just because the use of religious text in schools is permissible in limited situations does not mean it's a good idea. The report indicates some of the reasons why. The Austin-American Statesman reports:

Chancey examined the 57 school districts and three charter schools offering Bible courses in the 2011-12 school year to see whether guidelines established by House Bill 1287 in 2007 improved the impartiality of Texas Bible courses. The legislation sought to regulate courses for the first time. His research identified just 11 schools he considered “most successful,” defined as largely constitutional and academically rigorous.
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The study highlighted 20 districts and one charter school as having “most problematic” courses. One course is from the Belton Independent School District, about 60 miles north of Austin. The study pointed to course materials from the “Bible as Literature” course that treat the word of God as fact and say that “giving God his rightful place in the national life of this country has provided a rich heritage for all its citizens.”

You can read the report here.