Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys filed a lawsuit in state court Thursday against the California Department of Managed Health Care for forcing churches to pay for elective abortions in their health insurance plans.

The South Dakota Legislature will be considering a large number of important bills Wednesday including one to protect religious liberty and the right of conscience, to clarify that boys are boys and girls are girls, gambling, property rights and more.

Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Matt Sharp will testify Wednesday before the South Dakota House State Affairs Committee on two proposed laws: HB 1107, which would “ensure government nondiscrimination in matters of religious beliefs and moral convictions,” and HB 1112, which would establish birth certificates as the primary standard “in identifying a student’s sexual identity for purpose of participation in high school activities.”

The American church has a problem. It’s one part fear, one part confusion and one part apathy. Pastors, priests and rabbis have long swallowed the false notion that all things religious and all things political are somehow mutually exclusive – that never the twain shall meet.

If you’ve been hanging around the planet for any length of time – say, 20 minutes or so – you know that Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders doesn’t have a clue about… most anything that matters. But you’d think that a candidate for president might have a cursory understanding of the Constitution and the role of the Supreme Court, right?

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Friday to take up a case that addresses the question of whether states can exhibit hostility to religion by prohibiting churches and church-run organizations from participating in state programs solely because the groups are religious.

A New York court Thursday affirmed a Division of Human Rights ruling against an upstate couple for declining to coordinate a same-sex wedding ceremony in their own backyard.

Several religious non-profit organizations filed an opening brief Monday with the U.S. Supreme Court in consolidated lawsuits against the Obama administration’s abortion-pill mandate and its religious non-profit options, all of which force the groups to violate their faith.

Last Tuesday, Kentucky’s new governor, Matt Bevin, issued an executive order that eliminates the names of all county clerks from marriage licenses and protects the unalienable constitutional rights and religious freedoms of Kim Davis and all other clerks in Kentucky.

Two police officers from the Falls Church Police Department in Virginia told several Christmas carolers to stop singing on a public sidewalk outside of an abortion business. One of the carolers captured the officers on video informing the carolers that singing is prohibited under a noise ordinance and that they must cease singing.