The Christian Century

The Supreme Court declined on October 2 to hear a case from parents who complained after their children were required to simulate Muslim worship and attire as part of a history class.

The National Council of Churches said the Supreme Court ruling last month barring the use of military commissions to try detainees held at Guantánamo Bay is “a reasoned affirmation of what people of faith have been trying to communicate to the White House for years.

In a case related to religious freedom, the U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously sided with members of a small New Mexico sect in their bid to use hallucinogenic tea in religious rituals.

A new era began this month at the Supreme Court as Samuel Alito took a crucial seat on the bench.

A recent Supreme Court decision that upholds Oregon’s landmark law permitting doctor-assisted suicides does not end the nationwide ethical and legal debate on such suicides.

Republicans control both chambers of Congress and likely could muster enough votes to block the Oregon law that allows physician-assisted suicide. But an apparent about-face by an Oregon senator could alter the political landscape in the Senate.

The First Amendment protects religious freedom in two ways: by prohibiting the government from interfering with citizens’ religious exercise and by barring the state from promoting faith. Judging from his record, Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito seems apt to uphold the first safeguard but inclined to erode the second.

John Roberts, President Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court, donated legal work on behalf of gay-rights groups that helped them win a landmark 1996 case before that panel, according to the Los Angeles Times.

President Bush nominated a strong conservative, federal appellate judge John Roberts, to replace retiring moderate justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.

Catholic groups say they will guard against any attempt to use religious faith to derail the nomination of Judge John Roberts, a mass-going Catholic, to the U.S. Supreme Court.

They pointed to the very Constitution that Roberts would swear to uphold and its prohibition against using any type of “religious test” as a qualification for higher office.