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Banned Books & Banned Identities: Maintaining Secularism And The Ability To Read In Public Education For The Well-Being Of America's Youth, Megan M. Tylenda
Banned Books & Banned Identities: Maintaining Secularism And The Ability To Read In Public Education For The Well-Being Of America's Youth, Megan M. Tylenda
Indiana Journal of Law and Social Equality
Books containing LGBTQ+ themes and characters are being removed from public school libraries at a rapid rate across the United States. While a book challenge has made it to the Supreme Court once before, the resulting singular plurality opinion left courts without a clear test to apply, ultimately leaving students’ First Amendment rights in the air. Additionally, the increasingly relaxed view of courts towards religious influence in public schools indicates that if a modern case were to reach the Supreme Court, religious challenges may be accepted, which would leave LGBTQ+ students who seek to see themselves represented in literature without …
Defining Religion And Accommodating Religious Exercise, Justin Collings, Anna Bryner
Defining Religion And Accommodating Religious Exercise, Justin Collings, Anna Bryner
Indiana Law Journal
It is a volatile time in the jurisprudence of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses. In recent terms, the U.S. Supreme Court has revisited many key Church-State and free exercise questions, and the Justices seem poised to revisit several more. Each of these fundamental questions presupposes an antecedent question: what, for constitutional purposes, is religion itself? The Court has never answered this question consistently or systematically. But, at least in the case of constitutionally mandated religious exemptions, a clear pattern emerges over time: the broader the Court’s definition of religion, the weaker its regime of religious exemptions. The reverse has also …