A New York moment: 

I’ve been covering the measles outbreak in Williamsburg, Brooklyn—a neighborhood with a large Orthodox Jewish population—for an upcoming story, and I’m struck again by the general cordiality between city and Hasidic leaders despite their regular disagreements on various religious accommodations.

After the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution to a Buddhist prisoner in Texas, the state moved to restrict the religious exercise of all death row inmates. Chaplains can now watch executions from the viewing room, but they will no longer be allowed to accompany condemned prisoners to their deaths, the state announced last week.

It’s Friday night as usual for a group of Jewish college students at 14 Aigburth Road. Outside, the sun has set on a quiet residential street. Inside, candles flicker in one corner of a spacious dining room. A dozen folding tables, graced with white tablecloths patterned with swirling silver, signal a feast to come.

Around the tables, skirt-clad girls chat while taking turns coddling two tiny, 4-month-old twins in what they call “baby tag.” In an adjoining study separated by lattice wood dividers, Rabbi Mendy Rivkin leads a dozen young men in reciting a ritual prayer.

The U.S. Supreme Court last week denied a Catholic bed-and-breakfast owner’s plea for due process following a lower court’s ruling that her private home in Hawaii is actually a public hotel.

The U.S. Department of Education announced last week it will stop enforcing a ban on working with religious contractors to provide services to at-risk private school students. In an official notice to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Education Secretary Betsy DeVos explained that under the Supreme Court’s 2017 ruling in Trinity Lutheran vs. Comer, the ban was a form of religious discrimination.

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office last week announced the end of a six-year legal battle to force bakery owner Jack Phillips to design cakes that violate his religious convictions. The Colorado Civil Rights Commission voted unanimously to dismiss an administrative action against Phillips and his Lakewood, Colo., bakery, Masterpiece Cakeshop, for refusing to make a custom cake for a gender transition celebration.

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week in a case about a giant cross in Maryland that could affect public monuments and displays throughout the United States.