Religious Exemptions

The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that the Oregon Court of Appeals must look again at how the Oregon court system processed the discrimination claim against an Oregon bakery, Sweetcakes by Melissa, and its conclusion that the bakery violated Oregon’s nondiscrimination statutes when they refused to bake a wedding cake for Lambda Legal clients Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, because they said doing so would violate the owners’ religious beliefs.

Lambda Legal, the ACLU, ACLU of South Carolina, and South Carolina Equality Coalition are suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the state of South Carolina on behalf of a married lesbian couple, Eden Rogers and Brandy Welch, who were turned away by a government-funded foster care agency for failing to meet the agency’s religious criteria, which exclude prospective foster parents who are not evangelical Protestant Christian or who are same-sex couples of any faith.

The Tennessee State Senate is soon to vote on Tennessee SB 1304, a license-to-discriminate bill that allows taxpayer-funded child welfare agencies to reject foster or adoptive parents based upon the agency’s religious beliefs.