Edwina Rogers – SGI Fellow Attended Cato Symposium

SGI’s Government Affairs Fellow, Edwina Rogers attended the Cato Institute’s 13th Annual Constitution Day Symposium on Wednesday, September 17th. There are thirty-nine cases already scheduled for the fall term for the Supreme Court. The distinguished panel at the event focused on looking ahead for the October Supreme Court term 2014, and had numerous observations and predictions.

One religious case, Holt v. Hobbs, will involve the legal right of a Muslim inmate in prison to wear a beard. It concerns the grooming policy of the prison system and is a statutory case based on the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act which protects religious freedom. A fundamentalist Muslim inmate from Yemen would like to wear a beard of a certain length as part of his Muslim faith. The distinguished panel predicted that the inmate will prevail in his right to wear a beard of a certain length. He filed his case by writing a handwritten brief and has secured counsel from the University of Virginia. Currently 40 other states allow these types of religious beards. The case will be heard on October 7th.

A second case, Zivotofsky v. Kerry, concerns whether or not the State Department should allow Jerusalem-born citizens to have their passports display “Jerusalem, Israel” instead of just “Jerusalem”. The Executive Branch (including the State Department and the White House) has long taken a neutral position on whether Jerusalem is a part of Israel or Palestine. However in 2002 Congress passed the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, which ordered the State Department to allow citizens to have their passports display their city of birth as “Jerusalem, Israel” as opposed to simply “Jerusalem”. The case is scheduled to be heard in November.

By SGI’s Government Affairs Fellow – Edwina Rogers