Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation June 15 that protects faith-based foster and adoption care agencies from lawsuits challenging their Biblically based operational standards. Facing the threat of ruinous lawsuits for refusing to work with gay couples or provide abortions for children in their care, agency directors said they would have been forced to close their doors without the protections.

Faith-based child welfare agencies have mounted legal efforts to gain religious protections, as LGBT advocates cry discrimination. Meanwhile, thousands of children needing homes are left in the crosshairs. A new Texas bill—similar to laws passed in Virginia, Michigan, the Dakotas, and, just recently, Alabama—may ensure that faith-based agencies remain open to serve and recruit more foster and adoptive families. Will other states follow?

Is Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., trying to establish a religious test for serving in the U.S. government? Critics say yes and have even called on Sanders to resign over his unconstitutional comments.

Like many business people today, Steve and Bridget Tennes rely on multiple streams of income to pay the bills. They run an orchard called Country Mill Farms in Charlotte, Mich., that doubles as a wedding venue. When the city of East Lansing learned the Tenneses only host heterosexual weddings, it banned them from the town’s farmers market. 

Last Wednesday, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed suit on behalf of the Tennes family. ADF senior counsel Jeremy Tedesco said the city found out about the family’s religious beliefs in August. 

In a unanimous ruling hailed as a victory for religious liberty, the U.S. Supreme Court today ruled in favor of three Christian hospital systems facing a lawsuit over pension plan funding. Employees of the hospitals claimed the institutions violated federal law by not fully funding their pension plans. The hospitals argued federal law has long recognized an exemption to the funding law for churches and faith-based institutions.

After years of litigation, religious liberty lawyers are tentatively celebrating over the leak of a new version of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) contraceptive and abortifacient mandate. The new proposal, obtained by the website Vox, would grant broad exemptions to religious and nonreligious moral objectors to the mandate, whether nonprofits, for-profits, or individuals. 

A Minnesota federal judge heard arguments Friday in a lawsuit brought by the owners of a film company who want to tell stories of marriage from an exclusively Biblical perspective. The state’s non-discrimination law requires wedding industry businesses to serve all prospective clients, including same-sex couples, or face stiff fines and even imprisonment.