Michael A. Helfand is an expert on religious law and religious liberty. He is currently the Brenden Mann Foundation Chair in Law and Religion at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, Visiting Professor and Oscar M. Ruebhausen Distinguished Fellow at Yale Law School, and Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He is also Senior Legal Advisor to the Orthodox Union’s Teach Coalition.
I guess it isn’t surprising that it’s hard to find a minyan — a quorum of 10 Jews — in a North Carolina prison. I just didn’t think that was something I’d ever be learning from the Supreme Court. But that’s precisely what Supreme Court Justice Alito told us in one of his recent dissenting…
When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia — likely one of the most influential justices to ever sit on the Court — was found dead at the age of 79, the news sent shockwaves through the country. His death has significant implications for the cases currently on the Supreme Court’s docket. The remaining eight justices frequently…
Religious discrimination is wrong — a simple statement; and yet despite its simplicity, discrimination against Muslims in the United States is becoming increasingly acceptable. Presidential candidate Donald Trump recently called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” The statement itself has, thankfully, elicited condemnations from individuals and organizations across the…
America’s culture wars hit a boiling point last week over Indiana’s religious liberty bill, which was widely portrayed as giving license for “anti-gay discrimination” by allowing business to refuse serving potential patrons on account of their sexual orientation. The negative characterization of the bill has dominated the national conversation as a raft of critics —…
America’s most famous eruv is back in the news — and this time, not simply as the butt of a joke on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show.” In early January, a federal appeals court issued a key ruling concluding that erecting an eruv in Westhampton Beach, New York, would not violate the First Amendment. This…
Today, the Supreme Court issued its much-anticipated ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. The case considered whether the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) prohibited enforcing the Affordable Care Act’s “contraception mandate” — the requirement that employers provide employees with health insurance that covers contraception — against for-profit corporations. On one level, the case pitted…
The recent Supreme Court decision in Town of Greece v. Galloway upheld the constitutionality of the town’s prayer before its monthly board meeting. In reaching this conclusion, the majority’s opinion focused on the long-standing tradition of legislative prayers in the United States, dating back to the earliest years of our nation’s history. By this logic,…
The Jewish community needs Yeshiva University. For many years, this claim would have been considered uncontroversial within the Orthodox Jewish community. Orthodox Jewish students needed a place where they could pursue their religious education comfortably while earning undergraduate degrees — and the structure of the Y.U. curriculum undeniably afforded students this opportunity. But Y.U.’s rash…
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