The Court concluded that making government payments to a religious entity based on the decision of an individual parent does not qualify as an establishment of religion.
“The Constitution and the best of our traditions counsel mutual respect and tolerance, not censorship and suppression, for religious and nonreligious views alike.”
The Church of Scientology has to date won every case it has brought before the ECHR to protect the rights of its members to freely practice their religion in the Russian territory.
On September 28, 2021, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that Vladimir Leonidovich Kuropyatnik, a Moscow Scientologist, was illegally detained by a Russian police officer who questioned him for over one hour on the basis of his membership in the Scientology religion—an act which violated his human rights.
Today, National Religious Freedom Day, commemorates the January 16, 1786 adoption of Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. The document’s title reads simply: “An act for establishing religious freedom.”
October 27, 2020 marks the 22nd anniversary of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRF Act), described by the U.S. State Department as “landmark legislation that—for the first time—made promoting and defending international religious freedom a specific focus of U.S. foreign policy.
For the first time in its history, the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments by teleconference on certain cases, including a number on religious liberty.