Latest news with #UniversityofIllinoisChicago
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Deadline Extended: More Time to Submit Your Proposal for the OpenSSL Conference 2025
NEWARK, Del., May 30, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The OpenSSL Conference 2025 Call for Papers deadline has been extended to June 22, 2025. This extension gives engineers, researchers, security leaders, and open-source contributors additional time to submit proposals that challenge the future of cryptographic security. We seek submissions offering technical breakthroughs, real-world lessons, and practical insights on digital cryptography's past, present and future. Conference Dates: October 7-9, 2025Location: Prague, Czech Republic Tracks include: Business Value and Enterprise Adoption Technical Deep Dive and Innovation Security, Compliance, and the Law Community, Contribution, and the Future Confirmed speakers: Daniel J. Bernstein, Research Professor, University of Illinois Chicago Matt Caswell, President, OpenSSL Foundation Hayden Delaney, Partner, Thomson Geer Lawyers Rob Duhart, Senior Vice President, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure David Hook, Vice President of Software Engineering, Bouncy Castle Inc. Tim Hudson, President, OpenSSL Corporation Tanja Lange, Professor, Eindhoven University of Technology The OpenSSL Conference is a platform for those who want to challenge assumptions, push cryptographic boundaries, and contribute to building the next generation of secure communications. Submit your proposal by June the submission link to complete your application online. For questions, contact info@ or schedule a meeting with the OpenSSL Conference team. Contact:OpenSSL Corporation***@ PRLog ID: View original content: SOURCE OpenSSL Corporation Sign in to access your portfolio
Ya Libnan
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Ya Libnan
Suspect charged in Washington, DC shooting Told police, 'I did it for Gaza, free Palestine '
Elias Rodriguez, a Chicago resident, was charged on Thursday with first-degree murder and other crimes in the killings of two Israeli Embassy aides outside a Jewish museum in Washington. By some accounts, Mr. Rodriguez, 31, led a life typical of a college-educated young professional in Chicago, residing in an apartment in a middle-class North Side neighborhood, with friends and family nearby. But he was also increasingly active in left-wing politics, posting on social media and joining demonstrations in Chicago in opposition to Israel's war in Gaza, large corporations and racism. When Mr. Rodriguez was taken into custody after the shooting on Wednesday night, he told police officers, 'I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,' according to an F.B.I. affidavit filed in federal court. Here's what else we know about him. A school and work life that raised no concerns Born and raised in Chicago, Mr. Rodriguez graduated from the University of Illinois Chicago, a school west of downtown that attracts many local residents. Sherri McGinnis Gonzalez, a university spokeswoman, said that Mr. Rodriguez attended from the fall of 2016 through the spring of 2018 and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree. He lived in Albany Park, one of the most diverse neighborhoods in Chicago, on the city's northwest side. It is known as a community that has long welcomed immigrants. A century ago, it was home to many Jewish families from Europe. It is now a draw for Latino, white and Asian people. Mr. Rodriguez's father, Eric Rodriguez, is a union member who appeared in a video for the Service Employees International Union this year, identifying himself as a federal employee with the Veterans Affairs Department and an Iraq War veteran. The elder Mr. Rodriguez said in the video that he was concerned about cuts that the Trump administration was making to the V.A. system. Both of Elias Rodriguez's parents, who live separately, declined to comment. Elias Rodriguez bounced from job to job during his 20s. According to his LinkedIn profile, he worked as a writer for wikiHow, which publishes articles and quizzes on a variety of topics. He was a senior content associate for CouponCabin, a company based in Chicago that provides printable and digital coupons for discounts to consumers. He later worked as an oral history researcher and production coordinator at a Black history site, and then took a job at the American Osteopathic Information Association, a trade group for osteopathic doctors. 'He enjoys reading and writing fiction, live music, film, and exploring new places,' one job biography read. A turn to political activism on the left At the same time, Mr. Rodriguez had taken an active interest in politics. In 2017, he was photographed outside the home of former Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Chicago's North Side, wearing a checked shirt and backpack, and holding a sign that read, '$ for people's needs, not Amazon!' The demonstration was organized by the Answer Coalition, a group that opposes war and racism. The group was protesting efforts from Chicago officials to convince Amazon to build a second headquarters in the city. The company ultimately chose the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington. Mr. Rodriguez was quoted in an online article denouncing the officials' effort, identifying himself as affiliated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. 'The wealth that Amazon has brought to Seattle has not been shared with its Black residents,' he said, asking, 'Do we in Chicago and all across the country want a nation of cities dominated and occupied by massive corporations where only the rich and white can live, and the vast majority of us must live on edges of the city and society living in deeper and deeper poverty?' The Party for Socialism and Liberation disavowed on Thursday any connection between the organization and Mr. Rodriguez. 'We reject any attempt to associate the PSL with the D.C. shooting,' the group said on the social media site X . 'Elias Rodriguez is not a member of the PSL. He had a brief association with one branch of the PSL that ended in 2017. We know of no contact with him in over 7 years. We have nothing to do with this shooting and do not support it.' A post on social media on Wednesday night from an account that The New York Times verified as belonging to Mr. Rodriguez was titled 'Escalate For Gaza, Bring The War Home.' The post condemned the Israeli and American governments and what it called atrocities committed by the Israeli military against Palestinians. The post did not refer directly to the shootings, but sought to justify 'armed action.' Photographs on Thursday of the windows of what appeared to be Mr. Rodriguez's apartment in Chicago showed two signs about Palestinians, including one that referenced the 2023 killing of a Palestinian American boy in Illinois. Mr. Rodriguez was registered to vote in Illinois, and in 2020 donated $500 to Joseph R. Biden Jr.'s presidential campaign, records show. Superintendent Larry Snelling of the Chicago Police Department said that Mr. Rodriguez did not have a criminal background. 'I love you Mom, Dad, baby sis A chilling manifesto believed to be left by the suspected shooter pays tribute to his loved ones, amid a rambling diatribe about the conflict in Gaza and the American government. In the manifesto, signed off with the suspect's name, Rodriguez appears to defend the 'morality of armed demonstration' as he railed against the death toll in Gaza. 'I love you Mom, Dad, baby sis, the rest of my familia, including you, O*****,' the manifesto, obtained and shared online by journalist Ken Klippenstein, reads. In a seeming hint at what he was about to do, the 900-word statement said he was 'glad that today at least there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do.' The New York Times/ Daily Mail
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Only a fraction of fire cleanup workers are protecting themselves against toxic debris. One community center is fighting to change that
A crew of 10, many sporting bright orange National Day Laborer Organizing Network T-shirts, funneled out of a Mexican restaurant on the edge of the Eaton burn scar. Four months — to the day — after winds smashed a tree into a car next to NDLON's Pasadena Community Job Center and soot blanketed the neighborhood, a University of Illinois Chicago professor, NDLON staff and volunteers sorted into cars under the midday sun and began discreetly traveling every road in fire-stricken Altadena. They watched nearly 250 crews, working long hours (for good pay) under contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, remove the toxic debris covering the landscape in the wake of the fire. Of the over 1,000 workers they surveyed in the burn area on May 7 and 9, only a quarter wore gloves, a fifth wore a protective mask, and a mere tenth donned full Tyvek suits, as required by California's fire cleanup safety regulations, the group's report, released Thursday, found. For Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director and co-founder of NDLON, the results aren't surprising. NDLON — a Pasadena-based, national network of day laborer organizations, focused on improving the lives of day laborers, migrant and low-wage workers — has been responding to post-disaster worker safety issues for decades. Alvarado couldn't help but remember the laborers he and NDLON supported during the cleanup following 9/11 over 20 years ago. 'Those workers are no longer alive. They died of cancer,' he said. 'These are workers I'd known for decades — their sons, their cousins.' As Alvarado watches a new generation of laborers get to work in the aftermath of the L.A. fires, his call to action is simple: 'I just don't want to see people dying.' NDLON has seen lax PPE use time and time again following disasters. Since 2001, NDLON has dispatched to countless hurricanes, floods and fires to support what the organization calls the 'second responders' — the workers who wade through the rubble and rebuild communities after the devastation. Eaton was no different. 'We always respond around the country to floods, fires, no matter where it is,' said Cal Soto, workers' rights director for NDLON, who helped survey workers in the burn area. For the Eaton fire, 'we just happen to be literally in the shadow of it.' When wildfires push into developed areas like Altadena, they chew through not just trees but residents' cars, plastics, batteries and household goods like detergents and paint thinners, releasing hosts of toxic chemicals previously locked away. They include heavy metals like lead and mercury, capable of damaging the nervous system and kidneys, as well as arsenic and nickel, known carcinogens. Organic materials like wood and oil that don't fully burn can leave polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — or PAHs — which can harm the immune system and cause sickness in the short term and cancer in the long term. Read more: The L.A. wildfires left lead and other toxic material in the soil of burn zones. Here are their health risks Their primary opportunities to enter the body are through the inhalation of toxic air or through ingestion, after collecting on the hands of a person who then touches their face or uses their hands to eat. They can also, to a lesser extent, absorb directly through the skin. Masks and disposable head-to-toe coverall suits act as a barrier against the dangerous contaminants. The responsibility to ensure workers are using those protective barriers on the job ultimately falls on the employer, said Soto. However, the breakdown of the safety standards can happen anywhere in the chain: The state's OSHA division can fail to communicate rules to companies and enforce them. Employers can fail to educate their employees or provide the correct PPE. Workers themselves — despite it all — can choose to remove their PPE on long, hot days where a plastic suit and heavy duty mask feel suffocating. 'Sometimes it's uncomfortable to wear all of that crap — particularly when it's hot," said Alvarado, who was a day laborer before founding NDLON. "Sometimes you feel like you're suffocated.' NDLON and its Pasadena Community Job Center, within hours of the Eaton fire, became a hub for the community's response. Its volunteers handed out PPE, food and donations to workers and community members. By the end of January, it had hundreds of helping hands clearing Pasadena's parks and streets of debris to assist overwhelmed city employees. At the same time, day labor, construction and environmental remediation workers quickly rushed into the burn zone along with the donations, media attention and celebrities. Like clockwork, so did the labor safety violations. In a dimly-lit Pasadena church in late January, dozens of day laborers watched as Carlos Castillo played the role of an impatient boss, barking directions at three workers standing before them. 'Hurry up,' Castillo told them in Spanish, handing out boxes of protective suits and masks. One woman, standing in front of the room, fumbled with the straps of a respirator. Debora Gonzalez, health and safety director NDLON, eyed the day laborer's efforts before asking the crowd: 'What is our friend missing?' 'Gloves!' someone called out. Gonzalez and other volunteers called on the crowd, who quickly pointed out more problems with the equipment that the three workers had hastily donned. One had a mask that wasn't sufficient for toxic cleanup; Gonzalez also pointed out that his beard would allow dust to infiltrate. Castillo, a volunteer trainer and president of the D.C.-based immigrant worker-support nonprofit Trabajadores Unidos de Washington D.C., reminded them that when they are cleaning up an area after a wildfire, there could be a range of noxious chemicals in the ash. Gonzalez said she wanted them to be prepared. 'Tomorrow we'll practice again,' she told them. NDLON set up the free trainings for any day laborers interested in supporting fire recovery after some laborers began picking up work cleaning homes contaminated with smoke and ash near the fire zones. Employers are supposed to provide protective equipment to workers and train them on how to use it, but 'many times employers want to move quickly. They just want to get the job done and get the job done as quickly as possible,' said Nadia Marin-Molina, NDLON co-executive director. 'Unfortunately, workers' health goes by the wayside.' As NDLON worked to educate day laborers, another group of workers moved in: The Army Corps of Engineers' contractors. Alvarado quickly noticed that many of the corps' workers were not wearing the required PPE. Never one to let the 'Day Laborer' in NDLON's name limit his compassion, Alvarado reached out to a longtime collaborator, Nik Theodore, a University of Illinois Chicago professor who studies labor standards enforcement, to do something about it. A week later, Juan Pablo Orjuela, a labor justice organizer with NDLON, made sure the air was recirculating in the car as the team drove through the burn zone, surveying workers for the NDLON and University of Illinois Chicago report in early May. He watched an AllTrails map documenting their progress — they'd drive until they had traced every street in northeast Altadena. Read more: When FEMA failed to test soil for toxic substances after the L.A. fires, The Times had it done. The results were alarming Orjuela spotted an Army Corps crew working on a home and pulled the car to the curb. 'Eight workers — no gloves, no Tyvek suit,' he said. Nestor Alvarenga, a day laborer and volunteer with NDLON, sat in the back, tediously recording the number of workers, how many were wearing protective equipment and the site's address into a spreadsheet on an iPad with a beefy black case. One worker walked up to the car; Orjuela slowly lowered the window. 'Do you guys need anything?' the worker asked. 'No, we're OK,' Orjuela said, 'we'll get out of your way.' Orjuela rolled up the window and pulled away. 'I don't really have to tell anybody what I'm doing,' he said. 'I'm not being antagonistic, but you know … I'm just not saying anything to anybody.' Theodore and NDLON hope the window survey, spanning 240 job sites with more than 1,000 total workers, can raise awareness for safety and health concerns in the burn areas, help educate workers, and put pressure on the government to more strictly enforce compliance. 'This was no small sample by any means,' Theodore said. 'This was an attempt to be as comprehensive as possible and the patterns were clear.' For Soto, the results are a clear sign that, first and foremost, employers are not upholding their responsibility to ensure their workers' safety. 'It's the responsibility of the employer,' he said. 'I want to be clear that we have that expectation — that demand — always.' Yet the window survey found even job sites where the PPE requirements are explicitly listed by the employer on a poster at the site, usage was still low. The reality, NDLON organizers said, is that the state must step in to help enforce the rules. 'I understand that the disaster was colossal, and I never expected the government to have the infrastructure to respond immediately,' said Alvarado, 'but at this point, making sure workers have PPE, that's a basic thing that the government should be doing.' Former Times staff writer Emily Alpert Reyes contributed to this report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
22-05-2025
- General
- Los Angeles Times
Only a fraction of fire cleanup workers are protecting themselves against toxic debris. One community center is fighting to change that
A crew of 10, many sporting bright orange National Day Laborer Organizing Network T-shirts, funneled out of a Mexican restaurant on the edge of the Eaton burn scar. Four months — to the day — after winds smashed a tree into a car next to NDLON's Pasadena Community Job Center and soot blanketed the neighborhood, a University of Illinois Chicago professor, NDLON staff and volunteers sorted into cars under the midday sun and began discreetly traveling every road in fire-stricken Altadena. They watched nearly 250 crews, working long hours (for good pay) under contract with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, remove the toxic debris covering the landscape in the wake of the fire. Of the over 1,000 workers they surveyed in the burn area on May 7 and 9, only a quarter wore gloves, a fifth wore a protective mask, and a mere tenth donned full Tyvek suits, as required by California's fire cleanup safety regulations, the group's report, released Thursday, found. For Pablo Alvarado, co-executive director and co-founder of NDLON, the results aren't surprising. NDLON — a Pasadena-based, national network of day laborer organizations, focused on improving the lives of day laborers, migrant and low-wage workers — has been responding to post-disaster worker safety issues for decades. Alvarado couldn't help but remember the laborers he and NDLON supported during the cleanup following 9/11 over 20 years ago. 'Those workers are no longer alive. They died of cancer,' he said. 'These are workers I'd known for decades — their sons, their cousins.' As Alvarado watches a new generation of laborers get to work in the aftermath of the L.A. fires, his call to action is simple: 'I just don't want to see people dying.' NDLON has seen lax PPE use time and time again following disasters. Since 2001, NDLON has dispatched to countless hurricanes, floods and fires to support what the organization calls the 'second responders' — the workers who wade through the rubble and rebuild communities after the devastation. Eaton was no different. 'We always respond around the country to floods, fires, no matter where it is,' said Cal Soto, workers' rights director for NDLON, who helped survey workers in the burn area. For the Eaton fire, 'we just happen to be literally in the shadow of it.' When wildfires push into developed areas like Altadena, they chew through not just trees but residents' cars, plastics, batteries and household goods like detergents and paint thinners, releasing hosts of toxic chemicals previously locked away. They include heavy metals like lead and mercury, capable of damaging the nervous system and kidneys, as well as arsenic and nickel, known carcinogens. Organic materials like wood and oil that don't fully burn can leave polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons — or PAHs — which can harm the immune system and cause sickness in the short term and cancer in the long term. Their primary opportunities to enter the body are through the inhalation of toxic air or through ingestion, after collecting on the hands of a person who then touches their face or uses their hands to eat. They can also, to a lesser extent, absorb directly through the skin. Masks and disposable head-to-toe coverall suits act as a barrier against the dangerous contaminants. The responsibility to ensure workers are using those protective barriers on the job ultimately falls on the employer, said Soto. However, the breakdown of the safety standards can happen anywhere in the chain: The state's OSHA division can fail to communicate rules to companies and enforce them. Employers can fail to educate their employees or provide the correct PPE. Workers themselves — despite it all — can choose to remove their PPE on long, hot days where a plastic suit and heavy duty mask feel suffocating. 'Sometimes it's uncomfortable to wear all of that crap — particularly when it's hot,' said Alvarado, who was a day laborer before founding NDLON. 'Sometimes you feel like you're suffocated.' NDLON and its Pasadena Community Job Center, within hours of the Eaton fire, became a hub for the community's response. Its volunteers handed out PPE, food and donations to workers and community members. By the end of January, it had hundreds of helping hands clearing Pasadena's parks and streets of debris to assist overwhelmed city employees. At the same time, day labor, construction and environmental remediation workers quickly rushed into the burn zone along with the donations, media attention and celebrities. Like clockwork, so did the labor safety violations. In a dimly-lit Pasadena church in late January, dozens of day laborers watched as Carlos Castillo played the role of an impatient boss, barking directions at three workers standing before them. 'Hurry up,' Castillo told them in Spanish, handing out boxes of protective suits and masks. One woman, standing in front of the room, fumbled with the straps of a respirator. Debora Gonzalez, health and safety director NDLON, eyed the day laborer's efforts before asking the crowd: 'What is our friend missing?' 'Gloves!' someone called out. Gonzalez and other volunteers called on the crowd, who quickly pointed out more problems with the equipment that the three workers had hastily donned. One had a mask that wasn't sufficient for toxic cleanup; Gonzalez also pointed out that his beard would allow dust to infiltrate. Castillo, a volunteer trainer and president of the D.C.-based immigrant worker-support nonprofit Trabajadores Unidos de Washington D.C., reminded them that when they are cleaning up an area after a wildfire, there could be a range of noxious chemicals in the ash. Gonzalez said she wanted them to be prepared. 'Tomorrow we'll practice again,' she told them. NDLON set up the free trainings for any day laborers interested in supporting fire recovery after some laborers began picking up work cleaning homes contaminated with smoke and ash near the fire zones. Employers are supposed to provide protective equipment to workers and train them on how to use it, but 'many times employers want to move quickly. They just want to get the job done and get the job done as quickly as possible,' said Nadia Marin-Molina, NDLON co-executive director. 'Unfortunately, workers' health goes by the wayside.' As NDLON worked to educate day laborers, another group of workers moved in: The Army Corps of Engineers' contractors. Alvarado quickly noticed that many of the corps' workers were not wearing the required PPE. Never one to let the 'Day Laborer' in NDLON's name limit his compassion, Alvarado reached out to a longtime collaborator, Nik Theodore, a University of Illinois Chicago professor who studies labor standards enforcement, to do something about it. A week later, Juan Pablo Orjuela, a labor justice organizer with NDLON, made sure the air was recirculating in the car as the team drove through the burn zone, surveying workers for the NDLON and University of Illinois Chicago report in early May. He watched an AllTrails map documenting their progress — they'd drive until they had traced every street in northeast Altadena. Orjuela spotted an Army Corps crew working on a home and pulled the car to the curb. 'Eight workers — no gloves, no Tyvek suit,' he said. Nestor Alvarenga, a day laborer and volunteer with NDLON, sat in the back, tediously recording the number of workers, how many were wearing protective equipment and the site's address into a spreadsheet on an iPad with a beefy black case. One worker walked up to the car; Orjuela slowly lowered the window. 'Do you guys need anything?' the worker asked. 'No, we're OK,' Orjuela said, 'we'll get out of your way.' Orjuela rolled up the window and pulled away. 'I don't really have to tell anybody what I'm doing,' he said. 'I'm not being antagonistic, but you know … I'm just not saying anything to anybody.' Theodore and NDLON hope the window survey, spanning 240 job sites with more than 1,000 total workers, can raise awareness for safety and health concerns in the burn areas, help educate workers, and put pressure on the government to more strictly enforce compliance. 'This was no small sample by any means,' Theodore said. 'This was an attempt to be as comprehensive as possible and the patterns were clear.' For Soto, the results are a clear sign that, first and foremost, employers are not upholding their responsibility to ensure their workers' safety. 'It's the responsibility of the employer,' he said. 'I want to be clear that we have that expectation — that demand — always.' Yet the window survey found even job sites where the PPE requirements are explicitly listed by the employer on a poster at the site, usage was still low. The reality, NDLON organizers said, is that the state must step in to help enforce the rules. 'I understand that the disaster was colossal, and I never expected the government to have the infrastructure to respond immediately,' said Alvarado, 'but at this point, making sure workers have PPE, that's a basic thing that the government should be doing.' Former Times staff writer Emily Alpert Reyes contributed to this report.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
US Supreme Court may broaden religious rights in looming rulings
By John Kruzel WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court in a trio of rulings expected in the coming weeks appears inclined to extend its trend of taking an expansive view of religious rights while potentially dealing a sharp blow to the principle of separation of church and state. During arguments in the cases, a majority of the justices appeared sympathetic toward a bid to create the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in Oklahoma, a push for religious exemptions from a Wisconsin unemployment insurance tax and a request by religious parents of students in a Maryland county for an opt-out from classroom storybooks with LGBT characters. President Donald Trump's administration sided with the religious claimants in all three cases. The rulings, expected by the end of June, promise to offer fresh insight about how the court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, views the two religion clauses of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment. Its "establishment clause" prohibits the government from establishing or endorsing any particular religion or promoting religion over nonreligion. Its "free exercise" clause protects the right to practice one's religion freely, without government interference. University of Illinois Chicago law professor Steve Schwinn said he expects the rulings will continue the court's years-long trend of sharply limiting the application of the establishment clause and dramatically expanding the application of the free exercise clause. The net result of such prior decisions, Schwinn said, is that "the religion clauses today invite and in some cases even require religion to play an increasing role in public institutions, public programs and public life." "Given that this term tees up three significant cases on the religion clauses, all in a similar spirit, the impact of the trio could be quite substantial," Schwinn added. Notre Dame Law School professor Richard Garnett, who has supported the religious claimants in the three cases, described the court's trend over the past few decades as having "rejected an interpretation of the Constitution that would exclude religion from public life or prevent reasonable cooperation and accommodation." CATHOLIC CHARTER SCHOOL The highest-profile case of the three involves a bid led by two Catholic dioceses to establish in Oklahoma the first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in the United States. The proposed St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School and the state charter school board appealed a ruling by Oklahoma's Supreme Court that blocked the plan. Charter schools, considered public schools under Oklahoma law, draw funding from the state government. Established as alternatives to traditional public schools, charter schools typically operate under private management and often feature small class sizes, innovative teaching styles or a particular academic focus. Oklahoma's top court ruled that the proposed school ran afoul of the establishment clause and would be acting as "a surrogate of the state." St. Isidore's organizers argued that Oklahoma's refusal to establish it as a charter school solely because it is religious is discrimination under the free exercise clause, and said the Oklahoma court erred by deeming it an arm of the government rather than a private entity. Oklahoma's Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond sued to challenge St. Isidore's establishment. During April 30 arguments in the case, the conservative justices signaled sympathy toward St. Isidore while some of the court's liberal justices posed sharp questions about why the proposed school would not violate constitutional limits on governmental involvement in religion. "I'm just trying to understand your establishment clause 'nothing to see here' position," Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, arguing for the Trump administration. "Are you saying that the religious charter school's use of public funds to support proselytization, which the school says it intends to do, is not an establishment clause problem?" Jackson asked. Sauer said the establishment clause is not violated when parents get to decide whether to send their children to religious or non-religious schools. "Here, the parents are choosing with open eyes to take their kid to the religious charter school," Sauer said. SHIFTING APPROACH Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, said that recent decisions involving public aid to religious schools reflect a major shift in how the court has approached the First Amendment religion clauses. In 2022, the court ruled in favor of two Christian families in their challenge to Maine's tuition-assistance program that had excluded private religious schools. In 2020, it endorsed Montana tax credits that helped pay for students to attend private religious schools, ruling in favor of three mothers of Christian school students. Those decisions followed the court's 2017 ruling in favor of Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Missouri, that declared that churches and other religious entities cannot be flatly denied public money based on their religious status - even in states whose constitutions explicitly ban such funding. "For decades the establishment clause was seen as a limit on aid to religious schools," Chemerinsky said. "Now, the free exercise clause is creating a right of religious schools to receive aid." "The Oklahoma charter school case is exactly about this: not whether it violates the establishment clause for the government to support religious charter schools, but whether the free exercise clause requires that the government do so," said Chemerinsky, who joined a court brief opposing the religious charter school's legal position. Thomas Berg, a law professor at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, said the Oklahoma case could have a major impact on the establishment clause if the court rules that "a substantial number of charters (charter schools) are private actors, not state actors, and thus are not subject to the establishment clause." The First Amendment generally constrains the government but not private entities. Opponents have said religious charter schools would force taxpayers to support religious indoctrination and undermine workplace nondiscrimination principles because these schools might seek to bar employees who do not adhere to doctrinal teachings. OPT-OUTS AND TAX EXEMPTIONS The court is also weighing a bid by Christian and Muslim parents to keep their children out of certain public elementary school classes in Maryland's Montgomery County when storybooks with LGBT characters are read. The justices during April 22 arguments appeared inclined to rule in favor of the plaintiffs after lower courts declined to order the school district to let children opt out when these books are read. The parents contend that the school board's policy of prohibiting opt-outs violates the free exercise clause. The case did not directly implicate the establishment clause. The court's liberal justices raised concerns about how far opt-outs for students could go beyond storybooks in public schools, offering examples of subjects that might come up in classes such as evolution, interracial marriage or women working outside the home. The Wisconsin case involves a bid by an arm of the Catholic diocese in the city of Superior for a religious exemption from the state's unemployment insurance tax. The court appeared sympathetic during March 31 arguments to an appeal by the Catholic Charities Bureau - a nonprofit corporation operating as the diocese's social ministry arm - and four entities that the bureau oversees of a lower court's decision rejecting their tax exemption bid. The federal government and all states exempt certain religious entities from paying into unemployment insurance programs that benefit eligible jobless workers, as other employers generally are required to do. Most of these laws, including Wisconsin's, require that organizations be "operated primarily for religious purposes" for religious exemption eligibility. In rejecting the tax exemption, Wisconsin's top court found that although the groups "assert a religious motivation behind their work," their activities were "primarily charitable and secular," not "operated primarily for religious purposes." At issue was whether Wisconsin's denial of the tax exemption violated both religion clauses. Berg, who joined legal briefs favoring the Maryland parents and Wisconsin Catholic Charities Bureau, said the impact of the court's rulings in these cases depends on their scope. "Carefully, narrowly reasoned wins would continue the court's recent emphasis that religious exercise, although not the only right, is a constitutionally important one," Berg said. "But less careful, broadly reasoned religious wins could upset the balance."
