Alliance Defense Fund

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys are considering all available options for appeal of a federal judge’s decision Tuesday to dismiss Nampa Classical Academy’s lawsuit challenging the Idaho Public Charter School Commission’s ban on the use of religious texts in its curriculum. ADF attorneys filed the lawsuit on behalf of the academy last November after the state’s charter commission threatened to revoke the academy’s charter if it used the Bible or other religious texts on its classroom resource list.

Arizona’s Mohave Community College agreed Tuesday--after receiving a letter from the Alliance Defense Fund--not to eliminate the opening and closing prayers from its nursing program’s pinning ceremony this year. School officials originally removed the traditional invocation and benediction--which had been permitted since 1972--from its protocol for ceremonies this year, but reinstated it after a graduating speaker contacted ADF.

Alliance Defense Fund Senior Counsel Nate Kellum and ADF Litigation Staff Counsel Heather Gebelin Hacker will be available for media interviews Thursday following a hearing in a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of the Interior, brought by a Christian man kept from sharing his faith at Mt. Rushmore National Park in South Dakota.

The Alliance Defense Fund—jointly involved in a project with the American Legion and the American Legion Department of California to defend veterans’ memorials across the country—is strongly condemning the theft of the Mojave Cross veterans’ memorial from the California desert.

With President Barack Obama’s nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan for the U.S. Supreme Court, attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund reiterated their position on all judicial appointments: that liberty is only safe when judges rule according to the law and the Constitution and do not legislate from the bench.

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys secured a settlement and a dismissal order Tuesday in a lawsuit filed on behalf of a Christian man whose attempt to reserve a public library’s meeting room for a religious seminar was rejected by Osceola County officials. Last year, officials with Hart Memorial Central Library notified Anthony Verdugo that a policy prohibiting religious uses precluded his “Religion in America” seminar from taking place because of its religious content.

The Alliance Defense Fund obtained a letter Friday from the Wisconsin Department of Justice stating that the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics has abandoned its plans to provide full-service, second-trimester abortion services in a jointly operated facility.

An Alliance Defense Fund attorney will be volunteering in his personal capacity to participate Thursday in a “prayer flight” over the greater District of Columbia and greater Richmond, Va., area to commemorate the National Day of Prayer. ADF attorneys defended the National Day of Prayer Task Force and its chairperson, Shirley Dobson, in a federal lawsuit brought by the Freedom From Religion Foundation to halt the observance of the annual event and successfully had her dismissed from the suit.

An Arizona court Tuesday overturned the conviction of a Phoenix pastor, represented by Alliance Defense Fund attorneys, who was sentenced to jail for ringing church bells. The court reversed the conviction of Bishop Rick Painter of Christ the King Liturgical Charismatic Church in the wake of a federal court’s determination last month that the city noise ordinance under which he was convicted is unconstitutional when enforced against sounds generated in the course of religious expression, such as church bells. The ordinance offered an exemption for ice cream trucks, but not for churches.

Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel Austin R. Nimocks will be available for media interviews following his oral argument Tuesday before the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in Jackson v. District of Columbia Board of Elections and Ethics. He will also participate in a press conference at Judiciary Square, the grassy area across from the courthouse, at 1 p.m. EDT.

The Utah Highway Patrol Association’s defense of roadside memorial crosses honoring fallen police officers may benefit from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday that allows a veterans’ memorial cross to stand in California’s Mojave Desert.

Alliance Defense Fund attorneys filed a lawsuit Friday against Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York state court on behalf of a nurse forced to participate in a late-term abortion procedure under threat of disciplinary action, including possible termination and loss of her license. The state suit was filed in addition to pro-life nurse Cathy Cenzon-DeCarlo’s federal lawsuit, which is on appeal, because her rights of conscience are also protected by New York law.