#church-state-separation

#church-state-separation

On a frigid winter's day in 1906, tens of thousands of Jewish parents in New York's Lower East Side and Brooklyn kept their children home from school. It wasn't a snow day, but a protest: Activists and the Yiddish press had called for a boycott of the Christmas assemblies and pageants that they knew Jewish children would be obliged to attend on the day before the holiday.

Simpson Thacher worked with the ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center on behalf of Black civic leaders in a case challenging district maps in Mississippi Supreme Court elections, the article reports. U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock of the Northern District of Mississippi ruled Aug. 19 that the map diluted the votes of Black voters in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

The I.R.S. said on Monday that churches and other houses of worship can endorse political candidates to their congregations, carving out an exemption in a decades-old ban on political activity by tax-exempt nonprofits.