Litigation Activities
The Becket Fund has represented groups and persons from many different religious traditions in litigation, pre-litigation, and appeals, including Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans, Santeros, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians.
Notable clients include the nation's oldest Hindu temple, the Hindu Temple Society of North America, in Flushing, New York City, Prison Fellowship International, Muslim students in Richardson, Texas, seeking to pray the dhuhr prayer on the campus of Lloyd V. Berkner High School, and a Zen Buddhist silent meditation center in New York state that neighbors claimed would make too much noise.
The Becket Fund was counsel for the Petitioner church in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC. As a result of the case, the United States Supreme Court recognized for the first time the ministerial exception doctrine.
Previous clients also included the City of Cranston in the attempt to preserve the Prayer Banner at Cranston High School West.
The Becket Fund represented Sacramento-area public school students who sought to continue reciting the current form of the Pledge of Allegiance (including the words "under God") in Newdow v. Carey, the second case brought by Michael Newdow seeking to remove the words "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. The Becket Fund also represented intervenors in the challenge to the Pledge of Allegiance in Hanover, New Hampshire public schools. Both cases were resolved in favor of the current Pledge language.
Another Becket Fund client is a mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee that was denied the right to use its building by a local court after complaints that the mosque was promoting terrorism.
Among the Becket Fund's governmental clients have been the states of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, the city of Jersey City, New Jersey, and Spartanburg County School District No. 7.
The Becket Fund has also litigated on behalf of prisoners who seek to continue following their beliefs in prison. The Becket Fund has sought to ensure that observant Jewish prisoners are provided with kosher food in every prison in the United States. Currently pending is the case of Moussazadeh v. Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which seeks kosher food for the Becket Fund's client Max Moussazadeh. The Becket Fund is also representing a prisoner seeking kosher dietary accommodations from the Florida Department of Corrections.
Another significant area of litigation for the Becket Fund has been religious land use. The Becket Fund brought the first case under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), and has been involved with RLUIPA litigation throughout the United States.
The Becket Fund has also represented a number of amici curiae at the United States Supreme Court in appeals related to religious liberty, including various civil and religious liberties organizations, such as the American Jewish Congress, the Hindu American Foundation, the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, United Sikhs, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way.
Read more about this topic: The Becket Fund For Religious Liberty
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“There is, I think, no point in the philosophy of progressive education which is sounder than its emphasis upon the importance of the participation of the learner in the formation of the purposes which direct his activities in the learning process, just as there is no defect in traditional education greater than its failure to secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)