Swimming Lesson: Public Pool Reinstates Religiously Motivated Sex-Segregated Hours
Wedding Venue Has No Religious Right to Discriminate, Says NY Court
Good news out of New York: today an appeals court rejected efforts by a commercial wedding venue, Liberty Ridge Farm, refused to allow a same-sex couple to rent the venue for its wedding. The venue’s conduct violated New York’s antidiscrimination law, which prohibits (among other things) discrimination the basis of sexual orientation by public accommodations. Represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious-right group, the wedding venue argued that its antigay discrimination was protected by the rights to free speech, free association, and the free-exercise of religion.
Violence Towards American Muslims Is Growing
More on the New York Wedding-Venue Discrimination Case
Yesterday I wrote about a New York case in which a commercial wedding venue claims that it has a constitutional right to discriminate against same-sex couples, in violation of New York state law, when renting out its facility. New York Law Journal now has a report on the oral argument.
Lawyers for the wedding venue argued that merely by renting the facility for a same-sex couple to use for its wedding—on the same terms that the venue rents to other tenants—the venue's owners are being forced to "endorse a viewpoint with which they disagree" in violation of the First Amendment.
Religious Refusal of the Day: New York Wedding Venue Discriminates Against Same-Sex Couple
One of the more farfetched attempts to use religion to discriminate is on display in a case working its way through the New York courts. The owners of a commercial wedding venue refused to rent their venue to a same-sex couple who wanted to use it for their wedding. Unsurprisingly, the New York Division of Human Rights concluded that the wedding venue's refusal to rent to the couple violated the state's antidiscrimination law.
Gov. Announces New Anti-Discrimination Rules For Transgender New Yorkers
New York City Strengthens Anti-Discrimination Law
Appeals Court Rules Against Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York in Contraception Case
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled today that the Affordable Healthcare Act's contraception regulations and accommodations for religious non-profits do not adversely affect the rights of Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, the Diocese of Rockville Centre and others to practice their religion.