Recently in Law Category

In a post-9/11 compromise, the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority allows uniform workers to have religious headwear provided that it is colored blue and bears the MTA logo.

Despite a discrimination lawsuit brought against it by the U.S. government back in 2004, the MTA insists that the policy is appropriate, on the grounds that "standardized uniforms assist our customers in quickly identifying employees if they need emergency assistance or just travel directions." The department does not see any problem in requiring believers to brand their religious garb, so it continues to cite Sikh and Muslim employees for failing to follow the policy.

The Sikh Coalition has protested, and a majority of the New York City Council has come out in support of forcing the MTA to end what is truly a stunning example of bureaucratic ignorance.

Actress Carol Castro held beads and crucifix in her Brazil Playboy shoot, prompting a court there to halt distribution after the archdiocese protested.

That couldn't happen in the U.S., right? But if she were holding a picture of Mickey Mouse . . .

Can a German body-modder reclaim an ancient spiritual symbol from its Nazi appropriators, or does this tattoo Superman & swastika cross the line? The debate ensues in the comments on this BMEZine pic.

Update: Speaking of which . . .

Over at UncivilSociety and now Blog@Newsarama, I've been writing about the intellectual property issues raised by the recent court ruling in which the family of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel regained copyright in the Superman material in Action Comics #1.

Below: a couple religious t-shirts and a poster appropriating the Superman trademark. You will believe a God can fly . . .

Above: A Jesus Malverde scapular. For more, check out this article in today's New York Times:

Malverde items are typically sold at botánicas — alternative-medicine pharmacies found in Hispanic neighborhoods that sell herbs, ointments and assorted good luck and black magic charms and potions.

“People say Malverde helped me do this or that; mostly it’s people into drugs who think he’ll shield them from the police,” said Raul Gonzalez, owner of a botánica called Mystic Products in Compton, Calif. “It’s the power of the mind, you know. They believe it, so they take chances and get away with it, but they will eventually get caught.”

Indeed, drug enforcement authorities in Mexico and the United States said Malverde statues, tattoos and amulets can be tip-offs to illegal activity.

“We send squads out to local hotel and motel parking lots looking for cars with Malverde symbols on the windshield or hanging from the rearview mirror,” said Sgt. Rico Garcia with the narcotics division of the Houston Police Department. “It gives us a clue that something is probably going on.”

Courts in California, Kansas, Nebraska and Texas have ruled that Malverde trinkets and talismans are admissible evidence in drug and money-laundering cases.

The Christian abstinence movement has swayed a number of administrators in U.S. schools to establish an abstinence-only curriculum in their sex-ed classes. Two teens in Illinois have been suspended for protesting the abstinence message in their school by wearing t-shirts festooned with condoms and brandishing the message, "Safe Sex or No Sex."

My favorite bit from this story: the argument that being a priest exempts you from airport security searches. Were that the case, I'd be tempted to sign up.

A man dressed as a priest caught at Amsterdam's airport with three kilos of cocaine under his vestments claimed to police that his packages contained "holy sand", Dutch police said.

Police stopped the man at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport as he was transiting on a flight from South America, Robert Van Aapel, a spokesman for the Dutch Royal Military Police told CNN by phone Saturday.

"He refused to be searched saying that he was a religious person and it was not allowed," Van Aapel said.

"However, this is normal procedure so our officers insisted. They asked him again and after the second time they carried out the search and discovered the man had packs strapped to his legs below his priest's clothes. He told us they contained holy sand," he said.

He said the man, who is aged around 40 and a Bolivian national, was arrested Thursday after arriving in to the airport on a flight from Lima, Peru. He was attempting to transit on a flight to Milan when he was apprehended with the cocaine, worth around €105,000 ($155,000).

The Bolivian appeared in court Friday on charges of drug smuggling, Van Aapel said.

Dutch police are trying to establish if the man is a real priest after he claimed to be a senior member of the clergy in the Bolivian capital La Paz, he added.

From a wire service round-up in today's New York Post:

A mead horn surely would make time in prison pass that much easier.

A Utah prisoner is suing the Department of Corrections for denying him his right to practice an ancient Nordic religion.

Michael Polk says prison officials have denied him the mead horn, rune staff, prayer cloth, sword and Thor's hammer that he needs to practice his religion.

Officials say the items were denied due to security reasons.

Polk will lose if he's looking to carry a real sword, staff and hammer--it's a slam dunk, really--but if I were one of the officials I would have provided the prayer cloth, if only to establish a record of reasonable accommodation. After all, a court did recently rule in favor of an inmate seeking to wear a Thor's Hammer pendant after guards failed to take his request seriously.

When teaching entrepreneurial strategies and values, there are a couple things I always advise folks to look out for: the unintentional illicit double entendre and unoriginal borrowing of other people's ideas. And for reasons I won't get into today, religious enterprises seem especially inclined toward both.

Today's example:

The double entendre is obvious, accentuated by the strategic placement of fallen leaves in the woman's lap as if to focus attention on where the fire will start. The first question that popped into my mind when I saw this picture was, "Isn't abstinence supposed to prevent that??"

The second problem is more systemic. From Godtube to blatant trademark ripoffs, Christianity is fostering a horrible reputation for unethical appropriations of others' intellectual property. Commercial companies have by-and-large held back from filing lawsuits, no doubt in large part due to fear of a Christian consumer backlash. Can U Believe It? only adds fuel to the fire, blatantly ripping the business model and interface design of popular user-created t-shirt site Threadless.

As this Mediabistro article indicates, resentment toward this practice is growing and at some point we'll hit the tipping point. Or to put it in more theme-appropriate language, "Repent, for the judgment of law is at hand."

Looking for the ideal way to commemorate Mitt Romney's speech on freedom of religion and his Latter Day faith? How about this First Amendment Lager t-shirt from Wasatch and Squatters Beers, a Salt Lake City brewers cooperative whose other labels include Polygamy Porter, Evolution Amber Ale and of course, Brigham's Brew!

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