religious exemptions: Last News

medical professionals can legally deny service on the basis of their religious beliefs.South Carolina recently became the seventh state to permit medical professionals to decline services based on their personal religious or moral beliefs — joining the state of Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Ohio, and Illinois, reports NBC News. According to the Movement Advancement Project, a think tank that focuses on LGBTQ-related policies, with South Carolina’s addition, one-eighth of all LGBTQ people in America now live in states allowing denial of care, and preventing lawsuits from being lodged against providers who refuse to treat patients.Such policies are often approved under the auspices of “expanding religious freedom” or protecting First Amendments rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

MLive Media Group.Democratic lawmakers — who control the legislature for the first time in 40 years following the 2022 election — spoke favorably of the bill, which was one of the first six pieces of legislation they introduced on the first day of this year’s legislative session.Taken together, those six bills provide a glimpse at the party’s economic and social agenda, which includes repealing a 1931 ban on abortion, repealing “right-to-work” laws, rolling back the retirement tax for seniors, and expanding the earned income tax credit.“No one should be afraid to go to work, or school, in fear of their safety,” openly gay Rep. Mike McFall (D-Hazel Park) said of the nondiscrimination law, which liberals have argued is long overdue in a so-called “blue state” like Michigan.“It’s long past time for us to amend Michigan’s civil rights law so we can make our state a place where everyone is welcome, regardless of who they love or how they identify,” McFall added.Republicans offered a series of amendments to the bill seeking to carve out special exemptions for religious individuals or organizations, to drop gender identity from the bill, and to require individuals to use restrooms matching their assigned sex at birth.

challenging the Education Department’s habit of granting exemptions from Title IX to religiously-affiliated colleges and universities condones, arguing that the process encourages discrimination against LGBTQ students who attend those institutions.For example, in the complaint against Liberty University, REAP alleges that Liberty regularly discriminates against LGBTQ students through its policies and practices, including its statement on sexuality and relationships in the Student Honor Code and the role of the on-campus group Armor Bearers. The complaint also alleges that, between 2008 and 2012, the school discriminated against Luke Wilson, a former student and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, by classifying his LGBTQ identity as a violation of the Honor Code and pressuring him to undergo conversion therapy if he wished to avoid punishment.“I am beyond delighted that Liberty is (finally) being investigated for its conversion therapy program — a program that was in operation for over a decade,” Wilson said in a statement.

Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision in 2015.“This bill was to say have your license, but do not deny our understanding of marriage or force ministers to choose between signing a document they disagree with or performing a marriage that has no legal effect,” former State Sen.