WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – The nonprofit Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to take up an array of cases in its fall term with broad ramifications for school LGBT policy, abortion, and religious exercise.
The Washington Examiner reported on Becket’s latest slate of petitions, starting with a case in Maryland, Mahmoud v. Taylor, in which Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) mandating a list of LGBT reading materials for children in kindergarten through fifth grade, including “Prince and Knight,” a fairytale about a male knight and a prince who fall in love and get “married,” a book on 50 “LGBTQ+” historical figures titled “Rainbow Revolutionaries,” and the pro-transgender story “Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope.”
The district initially allowed parents to opt out but soon reversed itself in the name of fostering “inclusive and safe spaces for students.” In May, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the parents’ request for a preliminary injunction.
“The plaintiffs were clear that they are not trying to change the curriculum,” Becket CEO Mark Rienzi said. “They’re not trying to remove books from the classroom. They’re not saying the government can’t decide to teach this stuff, but they are saying that the government does have to let parents know when it’s going to give them this kind of indoctrination on sex and gender.”
Also on Becket’s agenda is Diocese of Albany v. Harris, concerning the New York Department of Financial Services’ attempt to force religious charities to subsidize abortion in employee health insurance plans, which the Diocese of Albany is resisting. At issue is a state law requiring employers to offer “medically necessary” abortion coverage, with “medically necessary” defined so broadly as to be effectively meaningless.
“If you primarily serve people of your own faith, then you can have an exception, but if you open your doors to all … (to) care for anyone regardless of your faith, if you’re out there offering a cup of soup to anyone who’s hungry, regardless of what their faith background is, then you lose your religious freedom protections, you lose your exemption under the statute, and you must also pay for abortions,” Becket vice president and senior counsel Lori Windham said.
Other cases the group hopes the nation’s highest court will resolve include a dispute over Catholic Charities Bureau’s tax-exempt status in Wisconsin, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in Florida challenging a local transit authority’s ban on religious ads, a Rastafarian convict whose religious dreadlocks were shaved against his will in a Louisiana prison, and a Chicago Bible institute’s right to require employees to abide by the group’s religious beliefs.
According to Rienzi, there has been a “dramatic uptick in the number of religious liberty cases that end up on the docket as a result of administrative action, either at the federal or the state or local level, far more than statutes” over the past three decades.
“So I think eliminating Chevron deference at least holds the possibility that we may get fewer of those religious liberty fights caused by overreaching agency action. … We’re going to have to wait a while to see how it plays out,” Rienzi said.
At the same time, he expressed hope that the Supreme Court’s decision this summer to overturn the Chevron doctrine, which gave significant regulatory discretion to unelected bureaucrats, will stem the flow.
“I think eliminating Chevron deference at least holds the possibility that we may get fewer of those religious liberty fights caused by overreaching agency action,” he said. “We’re going to have to wait a while to see how it plays out.”
Six of the Supreme Court’s nine current justices were nominated by Republican presidents, but the current majority’s track record on such cases is not as consistent as conservatives would like.
The Court has delivered conservatives major victories on gun rights, environmental regulation, affirmative action, and most significantly abortion with the overturn of Roe v. Wade, but it has also issued dismissive rulings on religious freedom, LGBT ideology, and vaccine mandates, to the point that conservative Justice Samuel Alito has taken the rare step of criticizing Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh for lacking the “fortitude” to resolve such issues.