5/5/17  //  Commentary

Yesterday, the Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF) filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump’s most recent Executive Order, “Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty.” While there has been muted reaction to Trump’s executive order, the FFRF complaint makes two important points that have been mostly unappreciated.

5/4/17  //  Quick Reactions

President Trump misstates the law, and mischaracterizes his own Executive Order, in the Rose Garden.

5/4/17  //  Uncategorized

An executive order to be issued today likely will direct the IRS to exercise “maximum enforcement discretion to alleviate the burden of the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits religious leaders from speaking about politics and candidates from the pulpit.” Here's what that means and why it matters.

5/3/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

It's rumored that tomorrow, Trump will issue an executive order on "religious freedom," singling out for protection only traditional and conservative religious views on sex, marriage, sexual orientation, gender identity, and pregnancy. That order will most certainly raise grave constitutional issues under the Establishment Clause.

5/2/17  //  Commentary

100 days in and 25 years after the unrest in Los Angeles, the Trump Administration is failing communities entitled to fair and just policing.

4/27/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

President Trump and Attorney General Sessions hold exceptionally pro-death penalty views. Here's how they might seek to increase use of capital punishment at the federal level, and why any such effort likely would fail.

4/21/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

The opinion by then-Justice Rehnquist in Hunter v. Underwood (1985), a case about denying the right to vote for racist reasons, offers thoughtful answers to many of the hardest questions that you might ask about motive and the Muslim Ban.

4/20/17  //  Commentary

A diverse group of leading constitutional law scholars—representing many different views about the Establishment Clause—has filed an amicus brief challenging the Muslim Ban. Here's what you need to know.

4/19/17  //  In-Depth Analysis

The Trump Administration may already have the tools it would need to predict with high accuracy the religious identity of a significant percentage of U.S. citizens and visiting Muslims. And software engineers, not lawyers, may be our first line of alarm and defense.

4/18/17  //  Commentary

Under President Trump, questions about the role of religion have come to the fore. The Supreme Court was set to decide a major Free Exercise issue this Term, but it now seems that the case is moot.

4/18/17  //  Quick Reactions

The ADA Education and Reform Act would undermine ADA compliance and make people with disabilities the involuntary unpaid consultants of the businesses that discriminate against them

4/17/17  //  Commentary

Privatization and decentralization of public education will return the U.S. to the days when students with disabilities were out-of-sight and out-of-mind, without meaningful education. Public schools could become the new institutions.

4/13/17  //  Commentary

Given the nativist overtones of his campaign and his administration’s signature policies — from the Muslim ban to an immigration crackdown that equates being a foreign-born minority with criminality — Trump has exploded the fiction that we live in a post-racial society.

4/13/17  //  Commentary

The Trump administration has enacted several policies to conceal, subvert, or manipulate information. It has retracted a proposal to add LGBTQ identification to the U.S. census and eliminated LGBTQ identification from HHS surveys. These policies and others attempt to deny the existence of a problem by disappearing the (inconvenient) facts.

4/12/17  //  Commentary

Criminal justice agencies have become part of our communities' mental health services systems. They need to abide by the disability rights laws that govern mental health services