Updates: Important Flast/Valley Forge Standing Case and Alleged Religious Discrimination in Chaplaincy

[Marty Lederman]

1.  The Supreme Court may decide as soon as Thursday (or Friday or Monday) whether to grant cert. in No. 06-157, Hein v. FFRF (was:  Grace v. FFRF).  If the Court does grant cert., I think it could be one of the most important (and to my mind troubling) EC cases in recent years, because the Court could limit Flast considerably, thus preventing many EC cases from ever being litigated.  The SG's peition is here:  

http://www.usdoj.gov/osg/briefs/2006/2pet/7pet/2006-0157.pet.aa.pdf

FFRF quite shockingly failed at first to file a Brief in Opposition, until the Court requested such a brief.  The SG's reply brief is here:

http://www.usdoj.gov/osg/briefs/2006/2pet/7pet/2006-0157.pet.rep.pdf


2.  The D.C. Circuit issued an opinion today in Veitch v. England, the case claiming religious discrimination in the Navy chaplaincy against "conservative Protestant religious beliefs."  http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200611/05-5196b.pdf  The court did not reach the merits, which might have been a good thing considering that the court thought the constitutional question was "rather troubling":
  Veitch would have us confront a rather troubling constitutional question: whether chaplains in the armed services can be required to endorse "pluralism" in their religious practices. The services are understandably concerned about unit morale. And those of us old enough to remember World War II movies will recall scenes of chaplains at the front line performing services for soldiers of different religions. On the other hand, Veitch's argument that a chaplain cannot be obliged to preach counter to his or her religious beliefs consistent with the First Amendment is hardly a frivolous claim. Fortunately for us-and unfortunately for Veitch-we need not decide this difficult question. We agree with the district court that Veitch may not raise this issue because his resignation was voluntary and because the Navy did not act unreasonably in refusing to permit Veitch to withdraw his resignation.
Some of the relevant alleged facts:
  Buchmiller [the supervisor] repeatedly criticized [plaintiff] for his insistence on preaching sola scriptura-the doctrine that Biblical teaching alone is authoritative, which is accepted by many Protestant faiths but rejected by Catholic and Orthodox churches. Continued friction led Veitch to send rather caustic emails to Buchmiller and to file an Equal Opportunity Complaint ("EO Complaint") seeking relief from Buchmiller's harassment.  Commander Lawrence Zoeller, a medical service officer, was assigned to investigate Veitch's complaint. Zoeller concluded that Veitch's allegation of religious discrimination was unsubstantiated. In explaining his decision to recommend denying Veitch's complaint, Zoeller described what he perceived to be the Navy's requirement of pluralism among religions. [The Navy's pluralism policy is discussed in the Zoeller Report, see Op. at 3, wherein Chaplain Gary Morris, of the United Methodist faith, reported that chaplain trainees "are taught that facilitating other religions and ministries is essential," along with "respect for other differences and traditions of faith especially when [a Navy] chaplain might have a mixed [faith] congregation." Joint Appendix at 649.]  Zoeller determined that Veitch had failed to satisfy the basic tenet of pluralism in his preaching, and that Buchmiller had been correct to counsel Veitch on this problem. Zoeller also found that Veitch's preaching was derogatory toward other faiths.



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/religionlaw/attachments/20061129/9498343f/attachment.htm