Jessica Mason Pieklo Posts

On Monday, the American Freedom Law Center filed a lawsuit by a Catholic nonprofit challenging the recently announced final compromise for religiously affiliated nonprofits such as hospitals and universities that object to the birth control benefit in the Affordable Care Act.

On Monday, the Tennessee Supreme Court got rid of an antiquated rule that classified statutory rape victims as potential criminal accomplices and eliminated the requirement that testimony of the victim be corroborated by other independent evidence.

It can take years for the effects of even the big Supreme Court decisions to really take hold. Consider the case of Walmart v. Dukes two years ago, a decision that revoked class-action certification from what would have been one of the largest gender bias lawsuits of its kind.

On Tuesday lawyers for the State of Arizona asked a federal judge to dismiss a legal challenge to a 2011 law that bans abortions based of the race or gender of the fetus, because the challengers have no standing to sue.

Justice Alito’s clinging to a cultural definition of the role of marriage as procreative and justification for legislating bigotry has been largely eclipsed by Scalia’s over-the-top, mouth-breathing dissent in Windsor. And given the cases lining up for the court next term, it’s time we pay it some attention.

Religious conservatives are one step closer to convincing the federal judiciary to shield corporations by granting them religious rights, thanks to new reasoning in a decision handed down Thursday in the Hobby Lobby case.

On Thursday the Roberts Court will decide whether or not to intervene in a case that is widely seen as the first major challenge to abortion rights since the landmark 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey.