Latest news with #ReligiousFreedomRestorationAct
Reuters
4 days ago
- Health
- Reuters
Religious freedom laws apply in drug injection site case, court says
CHICAGO, July 24 (Reuters) - An organization doesn't have to be founded with a religious purpose to claim protection under the country's laws governing the free exercise of religion, a U.S. appeals court said on Thursday in a ruling that applies the protections to nearly any group claiming to be practicing religion. A unanimous three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the decision in a dispute involving a Philadelphia non-profit that has sought to open a supervised drug-injection site in the city. The court gave Safehouse another chance to argue that it has a religious right to do its work after reversing a lower judge's ruling holding that Safehouse, which has said its work is informed by Judeo-Christian beliefs about the need to preserve life and care for the sick, is not protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Safehouse is fighting a long-running U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit seeking to bar it from opening the injection site. The 3rd Circuit panel sent the case back to the district court, directing it to reconsider Safehouse's claims after finding that it does qualify for the protection. Representatives for the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Ronda Goldfein, an attorney for Safehouse, called the decision "an important milestone for all community-based organizations that save lives by evidence-based, compassionate harm-reduction strategies." The fight between Safehouse and the federal government began in 2019, during Republican President Donald Trump's first administration. At the time, Safehouse was poised to open what would have been the first such safe-injection site in the country, where drug users under supervision by medically trained professionals could obtain clean syringes and inject themselves with heroin, fentanyl or other drugs. New York City instead in 2021 became the location of the first-safe injection sites, and the Justice Department has not pursued an action to close them. Safehouse has said it will open when it has legal permission. The Justice Department argued Safehouse's plans would violate the Controlled Substances Act by maintaining a place that would facilitate illegal drug use. U.S. District Judge Gerald McHugh rejected that argument in 2020, but the 3rd Circuit reversed it a year later, saying that while the U.S. opioid epidemic "may call for innovative solutions, local innovations may not break federal law." The case came back to the 3rd Circuit after McHugh dismissed Safehouse's claims that the threat of prosecution by the DOJ for violating federal drug laws was unconstitutionally chilling its ability to exercise its religious rights. McHugh said Safehouse's articles of incorporation and tax filings said nothing about any religious activity, and while its website mentioned a religious motivation, it did not describe any apparent religious practices or behavior in its activities. But whether Safehouse is a religious entity isn't the right question, the panel said. Under the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark religious rights ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, laws protecting the free expression of religion can apply to any corporations that claim to exercise religion, the court said. The case is U.S. v. Safehouse, case number 24-2027 in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. For Safehouse: Ronda Goldfein and Adrian Lowe of the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania, Ilana Eisenstein and Ben Fabens-Lassen of DLA Piper, Peter Goldberger of the Law Office of Peter Goldberger and Seth Kreimer of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law For the U.S.: Sarah Carroll and Lowell Sturgill, Jr. of the U.S. Department of Justice
Boston Globe
5 days ago
- Health
- Boston Globe
Parents seeking religious exemptions to school vaccines win reprieve in a West Virginia county
Froble's ruling came in a lawsuit that was filed June 24. The injunction was limited to the three children of the plaintiffs who sued the state and local departments of education, and has no impact statewide. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Morrisey, who served as West Virginia's attorney general from 2013 until he was sworn in as governor in January, said he believes the religious exemptions to vaccinations should already be permitted under a 2023 law passed by the Legislature called the Equal Protection for Religion Act. Advertisement 'Today's ruling is another legal victory in the fight for religious freedom,' Morrisey said in a statement. 'No family should be forced to choose between their faith and their children's education, which is exactly what the unelected bureaucrats on the State Board of Education are attempting to force West Virginians to do.' The board said in a statement that it was disappointed by the ruling and that its members 'will decide next steps in the near future.' Advertisement The original lawsuit doesn't explain what specific religion the families follow. It was filed on behalf of parent Miranda Guzman, who identifies as a Christian and said that altering her child's natural immune system through required vaccinations 'would demonstrate a lack of faith in God' and 'disobey the Holy Spirit's leading.' The suit was later amended to add two other parents. Most religious denominations and groups support medical vaccinations, according to the American Bar Association. Vaccination mandates for public schools are seen as a way of to prevent the spread of once-common childhood diseases such as measles, mumps, whooping cough, chickenpox and polio. But due in part to vaccine hesitancy, some preventable and deadly diseases are on the rise. For example, the U.S. is having its worst year for measles spread in more than three decades. Medical experts have long heralded West Virginia's school vaccination policy as one of the most protective in the country for children. State law requires children to receive vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough before starting school. Several states grant medical exemptions from school vaccinations. At least 30 states have religious freedom laws modeled after the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, signed in 1993 by then-President Bill Clinton. It allows federal regulations that interfere with religious beliefs to be challenged. On Wednesday, a Kanawha County judge dismissed a separate lawsuit against Morrisey's executive order because it didn't give the required 30 days' notice prior to being filed. That lawsuit, filed on behalf of two Cabell County parents, will be allowed to be refiled. It alleged that only the Legislature, not the governor, has the authority to make such decisions. Advertisement During their regular session that ended in April, lawmakers failed to pass legislation that was introduced to allow religious exemptions for school vaccine mandates.
Boston Globe
10-07-2025
- Health
- Boston Globe
These toads have psychedelic powers, but they'd prefer to keep it quiet
'In just over a decade, we've put this species at risk of extinction in the name of healing and expansion of consciousness,' said Anny Ortiz, clinical therapeutics lead at the Usona Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Madison, Wis., that focuses on psychedelic drugs for medical use. Combined with habitat loss and other anthropogenic threats like climate change, 'widespread toad abuse' is creating a 'triple whammy for the species,' she said. Scientists chemically identified the psychedelic compound 5-MeO-DMT in Sonoran Desert toad secretions in 1967. However, until recently, few people bothered the amphibians or were aware of their psychedelic properties. That changed in 2014, Ortiz said, when U.S. media outlets and others began publicizing the fact that the toad's dried secretions could be smoked to induce a brief but intense high. Advertisement Many of these accounts also perpetuated a false narrative that 'toad medicine' was an ancient practice of Indigenous tribes living in the Sonoran Desert, but no evidence supports this claim, said Ortiz, who conducted research on the molecule as part of her dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Advertisement But as stories about the drug spread, 5-MeO-DMT became an increasingly popular for-profit offering by self-described shamans, new-age healers, and underground practitioners around the world. 'Toad churches,' where people could go to smoke the compound, also began popping up around the United States, including in California, Minnesota, Texas, Wisconsin, and other states. Saguaros grow in Saguaro National Park in Tucson, Ariz. CASSIDY ARAIZA/NYT In the United States, 5-MeO-DMT is mostly banned as a Schedule I controlled substance, defined as having no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. But some groups secured a legal carve-out under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act by declaring the drug a sacrament, Ortiz said. To supply the growing market, more and more foreigners began showing up in Mexico, asking for toads, said Ortiz, who grew up in the area. 'This led to locals seeing it as an economic commodity.' Many Mexican ranchers now amass toads, keeping them in buckets and bags to sell to foreigners to take back home. The animals suffer 'appalling' injuries and stress from being kept in captivity and repeatedly milked for their secretions, Ortiz said. The species currently has no protections in Mexico and is listed as being of 'least concern' on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species. Ortiz feared that the pressure on the toads was creating a serious new threat, though, so she reached out to Georgina Santos-Barrera, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, to collaborate on a conservation assessment. Between 2020 and 2024, they conducted annual nocturnal visits to nine sites in Sonora state and one in Chihuahua. In total, they found an estimated 400 adult toads and 2,000 juveniles. At least three major populations seemed to have disappeared, and several others appeared to be in serious decline. Advertisement The toads the researchers did find were also significantly smaller than ones observed in years past. This is concerning, Ortiz said, because large toads have the greatest reproductive capacities. 'The right conditions were there,' she said. 'But the big specimens were just gone.' Sonoran Desert toads, which are also known in the United States as Colorado River toads, play key roles as both predators and prey. As the population declines, 'I'm sure we'll observe big ecological problems,' Santos-Barrera said. Already, she and Ortiz have heard anecdotal evidence that crop-eating insects have surged in recent years. 'The toads are not there, so these bugs are not being kept in check,' Ortiz said. Once their findings are published, Santos and Ortiz plan to ask the International Union for Conservation of Nature to adjust the toad's conservation status. They hope this will also lead to Mexico issuing national protection for the species. The United States has already nominated the Sonoran Desert toad to be subject to international trade regulations under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. It will be voted on in November. But protections and trade regulations can only go so far, Ortiz said. What is really needed, she went on, is to persuade psychedelic users to turn away from toads. Synthetic 5-MeO-DMT, identical to the natural version, is available, Ortiz said. The molecule can also be extracted from certain plants. Yet many practitioners insist that toad-derived secretions are preferable because they are natural, Ortiz said. Some also insist that the secretions contain other chemicals that contribute to the drug experience. Advertisement In fact, the other compounds the toads produce are cardiotoxins with no mind-altering properties, according to Ortiz. 'There's no added benefit for using secretions,' she said.
Black America Web
29-06-2025
- Politics
- Black America Web
Supreme Court To Hear Rastafarian Lawsuit Over Shaved Locs
Source: JOSPIN MWISHA / Getty The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it will hear the case of Damon Landor, a devout Rastafarian whose dreadlocks were forcibly shaved by prison guards in Louisiana, despite a clear legal precedent protecting his religious right to wear them. According to the lawsuit, Landor, who had vowed not to cut his hair for nearly two decades as part of his faith, entered the Louisiana prison system in 2020 to serve a five-month sentence for a drug-related offense. At the time when he began his sentence, his locs fell nearly to his knees. After serving all but three weeks of his five-month sentence, Landor was transferred to the Raymond Laborde Correction Center. He claims the violation occurred at that facility. Landor states that he entered with a copy of a court ruling that made it clear that practicing Rastafarians should be given a religious accommodation allowing them to keep their dreadlocks. But a prison officer dismissed his concerns, and Landor was handcuffed to a chair while two officers reportedly shaved his head after throwing the documents in the trash. 'When I was strapped down and shaved, it felt like I was raped,' Landor said in a statement. 'And the guards, they just didn't care. They will treat you any kind of way. They knew better than to cut my hair, but they did it anyway.' Upon his release, Landor filed a lawsuit raising various claims, including the one at issue at the Supreme Court, which he brought under a federal law called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, seeking damages for the trauma and violation he endured. Source: JOSPIN MWISHA / Getty Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill said in court papers that the state does not contest that Landor was mistreated and noted that the prison system has already changed its grooming policy to ensure that other Rastafarian prisoners do not face similar situations. At the heart of the case is whether individuals suing under RLUIPA can recover monetary damages. Currently, there's a similar law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, that allows for monetary compensation for damages, and Landor's attorneys point out that both statutes contain 'identical language.' In a 2020 decision, the Supreme Court affirmed that money damages were permissible under the RFRA. Landor's lawyers argue that precedent should apply here as well. Nevertheless, both a federal judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of the state, barring Landor from collecting damages. Now, the highest court in the country will weigh in. The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments in its next term, which begins in October and concludes in June 2026. For Landor and many other incarcerated individuals who practice minority religions, the outcome could determine whether justice is just in name or inclusive of reparations. SEE ALSO: Jamaica Supreme Court Rules School Can Ban Dreadlocks Black Men Sue To Keep Beards And Locks SEE ALSO Supreme Court To Hear Rastafarian Lawsuit Over Shaved Locs was originally published on
San Francisco Chronicle
24-06-2025
- Health
- San Francisco Chronicle
A West Virginia parent sues seeking a religious exemption from required school vaccinations
CHARLESTON, (AP) — A West Virginia woman filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking a religious exemption from required school vaccinations for her young child. Miranda Guzman alleges that the state's vaccine mandate violates a 2023 West Virginia law that stipulates the government would not be able to 'substantially burden' someone's constitutional right to freedom of religion unless doing so 'is essential to further a compelling governmental interest.' Guzman sued the state and local boards of education and the county schools superintendent in Raleigh County Circuit Court. West Virginia was among just a handful of states that granted only medical exemptions from school vaccinations when Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey issued an executive order in January allowing religious exemptions. However, the state Board of Education voted this month to direct public schools to ignore the executive order and instead follow long-standing school vaccine requirements that are laid out in state law. Also, two groups have sued over the governor's order, saying the Legislature, not the governor, has the authority to make such decisions. Guzman obtained a religious exemption to the vaccine mandate from the state health department and enrolled her child in elementary school for the 2025-26 school year. But on June 17, Guzman received an email from the Raleigh County school superintendent rescinding the certificate, according to the lawsuit. Guzman's attorneys said 'the straightforward legal issue" in the lawsuit is whether enforcement of the state vaccine mandate violates the 2023 Equal Protection for Religion Act. West Virginia Board of Education spokesperson Christy Day referred to a June 12 statement from the board that its intent is to 'do what is best' for public school students, educators and school service personnel. 'This includes taking the important steps of protecting the school community from the real risk of exposure to litigation that could result from not following vaccination laws,' the earlier statement said. A telephone message left with Raleigh County Schools Superintendent Serena Starcher wasn't immediately returned. West Virginia's school vaccination policy long has been heralded by medical experts as one of the most protective in the country for children. State law requires children to receive vaccines for chickenpox, hepatitis B, measles, meningitis, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough before starting school. Morrisey, who is not a party to the lawsuit, held a news conference Tuesday in Beckley in support of Guzman. 'This is not about whether or not about parents should vaccinate their children,' Morrisey said. 'This is about standing up for religious liberty.' At least 30 states have religious freedom laws, including one signed by Georgia's governor in April. The laws are modeled after the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, signed in 1993 by then-President Bill Clinton, which allows federal regulations that interfere with religious beliefs to be challenged.
