News & Commentary

Indiana legislators are pushing through a bill authorizing public schools to hire or recruiting volunteer “school chaplains.”

Indiana’s controversial RFRA law protects religious freedom for all Hoosiers, not just those who practice Christianity.

The court has adopted an approach that would see the lines between church and state hopelessly blurred, if not eliminated altogether.

By Jane Henegar, Executive Director, ACLU of Indiana

A child and his father, along with the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the ACLU, won a preliminary injunction on December 2, 2015 to stop Concord Community Schools in Elkhart County from putting on a live nativity scene as part of its 2015 "Christmas Spectacular."Public school curriculum must always serve a secular educational purpose.The ru

Daniel Littlepage, a Native American, is a prisoner confined at the Miami Correctional Facility located in Bunker Hill, Indiana. His religion requires him, among other things, to pray with others in a Sacred Circle. John Walker Lindh, a prisoner at the Federal Correctional Institution in Terre Haute, Ind., practices Islam, which requires him to participate in group prayer. Paul Veal, a prisoner at the Pendleton Correctional Facility, is a practicing African Hebrew Israelite, a religion which mandates communal worship and study as a necessary component of creating a lifestyle that complies with the desires and commandments of God.

When the Saint Joseph Regional Medical Center decided to vacate its 21-acre site in downtown South Bend, Ind., St. Joseph's High School was the only prospect to step forward with solid interest in acquiring the site. The school wanted to build a new high school on the property with athletic facilities including a football field. In order to do that, the school also wanted to purchase an adjacent property, which was home to a Family Dollar store, but was unable to negotiate that purchase. In June 2011, the City of South Bend approved a plan to use $1.2 million in taxpayer funds to purchase the Family Dollar property with the sole intention of transferring the land to the Catholic Diocese, which operates the school, for $1.