The Religious Liberty Clinic recently finished a winter quarter that included a flurry of student and case successes. Students defended the civil rights of a variety of religious groups – including Hare Krishna, Jewish, Muslim, Seventh-day Adventist, and Sikh clients – in a series of matters across the country. In a particularly intense week, they filed two trial-level complaints and two appellate briefs, and coordinated two settlement demands.

Among their projects, the students filed suit in a California federal court challenging the denial of kosher meals to a Messianic Jewish inmate; defended in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit the rights of a church to minister to the homeless; and helped secure a favorable EEOC finding for Sikh truck-drivers who lost their jobs after refusing to cut their hair. The clinic was also proud to have filed an amicus brief for the Women’s Prison Association in the Holt v. Hobbs case, where the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of broad protection for religious accommodations in prison. Read more of the history on some of this work here.

The winter-term students who worked on the above matters were Alex Kasner (JD ’15), Andria Montoya (JD ’15), Marni Barta (JD ’16) and Kimberly Larkin (JD ’16).