Over the past several years, people of numerous different faiths across the country have brought religious liberty lawsuits involving the right to seek an abortion, perform same-sex marriages, protest the death penalty, protect refugees, fight nuclear proliferation, provide harm reduction services to drug users, shelter the homeless, prevent environmental degradation, and resist ethnic and religious profiling.
Just this week, humanitarian aid worker Dr. Scott Warren was in court defending his right to act on his religious beliefs by providing food and water to migrants crossing the Arizona desert. Dr. Warren has been charged with “harboring…aliens” by the federal government — charges that could result in a lengthy prison sentence. He has brought an argument based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a broad federal religious liberty law, charging that his prosecution imposes an illegal burden on his religious exercise. Warren has explained that serving migrants is required by his faith, stating: “[f]or me we most definitely do unto others as we would want to have done unto us. When we come into interaction with another person, that person is us and we are that person.”
Read Full Article »