What is a &#39;creed&#39; legally? 'Creed' is a 'protected characteristic' with respect to discrimination or harassment, at least in some U.S. jurisdictions or for some private employers. The Wikipedia article "Creed" defines it thus: A creed (also confession, symbol, or statement of faith) is a statement of the shared beliefs of a religious community in the form of a fixed formula summarizing core tenets. Does the legal definition, or any (if there are multiple) legal definitions, significantly differ from the above?
It appears to be a grey area and does not appear to have an explicit definition aside from religion in many jurisdictions. Even those jurisdictions that discuss a broader definition, seem to shy away from actually doing so. Note that this is only a cursory search and experts in various jurisdictions may come up with more detailed results. This case seems to mean that it is a formal declaration of a recognized religion. Creed Legal Definition The word creed imports a formal declaration of religious belief. The word has no reference to benevolent, philanthropic or fraternal organizations, secret or otherwise, even though of a moral character. [Hammer v. State, 173 Ind. 199 (Ind. 1909)]. This site Says that it appears to be based on religion, but shows that (in Tennessee at least) there is no specific case law on the matter. Since the law has not yet established what “creed” means, as far as prohibiting employment discrimination on that basis, employers have little guidance in this area. If an employee presents a non-religious but sincerely held belief, will that be enough to be considered a “creed” by the courts? With only a gut feeling to go by, we think it likely that Tennessee courts will lean toward the view that “creed” and “religion” are synonymous terms; thus, veganism, for example, since it does not constitute a religious belief, would not be a protected group under the THRA. However, to play it safe, employers should refrain from passing judgment or making derogatory comments regarding an employee’s expressed beliefs. The hard part will come when an employer is faced with a situation that may appear he is terminating an employee due to his creed. Sooner or later, the courts will be ruling in such cases. While we tend to think that Tennessee will decide that creed equals religion (for THRA purposes), the last time we checked, the courts were not giving us a vote on the question. So, employers, proceed with care! Ontario Human Rights Commission Various other cases have left open the possibility that non-religious belief may constitute a creed under the Code (as discussed below). Overall, the courts appear to be reluctant to offer any final, authoritative, definitive or closed definition of creed, preferring a more organic, analogical (“if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck”)[232] case-by-case assessment. This has yielded a variety of results. Courts and tribunals have recognized a wide variety of subjectively defined religious and spiritual beliefs within the meaning of creed under the Code and religion under the Charter, including: Aboriginal spiritual practices,[233] Wiccans,[234] Hutterian Bretheren[235] Raelians[236] Practitioners of Falun Gong[237] Members of the Worldwide Church of God[238] Rocky Mountain Mystery School.[239] There is nothing in the case law that would prohibit redefining “creed” more broadly and include secular ethical and moral beliefs. Therefore, the question of what should constitute a creed in terms of the right to be free from discrimination under the Ontario Code – in particular with respect to secular, moral or ethical beliefs – remains an open one. In fact, this is a central question being considered in the current creed policy update. At the same time, the courts have offered some guidelines around the outer limits of what they will recognize as meriting protection under the Code ground of creed (as discussed below) .
It is legal. What would be illegal is for a public school to promote or inhibit a religion. You can teach all sorts of facts that touch on religion (millennia of Western history) and you can e.g. survey the major religions of the worlds as a cultural phenomenon. You can use circumlocutions or proper names. It's not illegal to confess to having personal beliefs. This is about public schools, which is an arm of the government. A person who is in a school, for example a student, is not prohibited from promoting or demoting a religion, therefore a student who clearly and openly advocates the Pastafarian faith is not to be sanctioned, except insofar as the conduct is objectively disruptive. This is because the student is clearly not acting as an agent of a government institution. Things are a little murky when it comes to teachers and guest speakers. Teachers do not lose their First Amendment rights when they enter the classroom. Here is a summary of pertinent court rulings. The main principle that comes from such cases is that school districts can direct teachers to refrain from certain actions when there is a reasonable belief that the actions would run afoul of the Establishment Clause. Individual teachers have been ordered to not engage in silent reading of prayers in school (Roberts v. Madigan). Case law on guest lecturers is probably close to zero, since guest lecturers don't have the same kind of property right to be at the school expressing themselves as teachers do.
There isn't a difference. The terminology in England and Wales that means the same thing is "litigant in person", with the source of these Latin phrases have abandoned them in favor of plain English terminology. The variation of usage, however, does not necessarily break down on a federal v. state court basis. Pro se is the majority usage, but the variation is more regional, within state courts, than it is a federal v. state divide. California and Michigan, for example, use both terms and use them interchangeably. If there is a historical reason for the variation in terminology, I haven't groked it. Incidentally, there was historically a subtle distinction between the two concepts related to consent to the personal jurisdiction of the court that has long since become obsolete (more than a century ago), but which movements such as the "sovereign person" movement errantly believe has great legal importance to the power of a court over them.
Discrimination is legal except on the basis of a protected class U.S. federal law protects individuals from discrimination or harassment based on the following nine protected classes: sex, race, age, disability, color, creed, national origin, religion, or genetic information Absent from that list is “occupation”. State law may add additional classes including sexual orientation and marital status. Private organisations are also free to add additional classes for their operations.
It is like an affidavit of sort, sworn out without the jurat and not before a notary. The swearing out of a complaint or rebutting evidence in all Federal civil matters (some states allow for the same) must contain an affidavit or an "unsworn declaration" that swears out the facts to be true and accurate, even though not notarized, and is based on fact and not supposition. It is subject to the same penalties of perjury if one lies as if you swear on a bible and testify in court or on a "sworn" affidavit. Affidavits need not be sworn before God, or on a bible. You have a right to just "affirm" that you will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth....and not "so help me God". Many courts don't use a bible at all anymore. 28 U.S.C. 1746 relates to these "Unsworn Declarations Under Penalty Of Perjury" It is not b/c you don't believe in God that you'd use this...you always have the option of swearing out even a declared affidavit or testifying without swearing on a bible if you're an atheist. They just leave out the "before God" part. Affidavits are the norm, however, in Federal Courts that have an expedited docket this is typically used when it could take a while to get a notary and the evidence is due. (In some states lawyers are automatically notaries but in others they aren't). The ability to swear out a complaint or contest a deposition without having to wait on a notary can be the difference between making your deadline or not. It's commonly used when records custodians are called to certify the authenticity of documents produced pursuant to subpoena or other formal request. Under F.R.Civ.P 56 declarations usually are not within the type of evidentiary categories that can be used at the summary judgment phase. If it's a small misstatement you would probably be faced with a fine. If it's a total lie, outright, you'd be looking at jail time (say a records custodian removed evidence and swore out it was the complete business record in a fraud case). 18 U.S. Code § 1621 discusses perjury generally (in federal actions).
The law doesn't distinguish between two Christians with divergent beliefs, or between an atheist and a Christian (obviously with divergent beliefs). The law simply does not care what religion you have, or whether you have one. The law just says "follow the law!". The complication is that part of the First Amendment which says that the law is to be neutral as to religion also has what's known as the "Free Exercise Clause", the part that says "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof", which has been taken to refer to actions undertaken because of that belief. There have been various rulings on the conflict between religious doctrine and laws requiring or prohibiting certain actions (mandatory flag salutes, conscription, religious pamphleting). When a law conflicts with a fundamental right such as a right protected by the First Amendment, such a law is allowed only in narrow circumstances (known as strict scrutiny). It is up to Congress to state what kinds of First Amendment-based exceptions there are to laws. In a case involving the draft, SCOTUS held in US v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 that The test of religious belief within the meaning of the exemption in § 6(j) is whether it is a sincere and meaningful belief occupying in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God of those admittedly qualified for the exemption This view underlies the current regulation on employment and religious discrimination in 29 CFR 1605.1 that In most cases whether or not a practice or belief is religious is not at issue. However, in those cases in which the issue does exist, the Commission will define religious practices to include moral or ethical beliefs as to what is right and wrong which are sincerely held with the strength of traditional religious views. The question that EEOC or the courts would have to answer is, what fundamental life belief is being violated by compelling a certain action? Forcing Muslims to eat pork violates a fundamental belief of Muslims. Prohibiting Muslim employers from discriminating against pork-eaters does not violate those beliefs, because there is no fundamental life belief held by Muslims that it is a mortal sin to hire pork eaters. In this case, Ann is at a disadvantage because she can't maintain that being forced to hire Christine violates a fundamental belief of hers (it's like refusing to hire pork-eaters). If Christine was obnoxious in espousing her viewpoint in a manner that reflected badly on Ann's business, Ann can fire Christine. Ann might, on those same grounds, refuse to hire Christine if there was a well-justified belief that such damage to her business will result (you don't have to wait until your business is destroyed). The (implied) fact on Christine's resume is not sufficient evidence that Christine will cause a problem for Ann's business. Instead, it is a plain instance of religious discrimination, which is prohibited by law.
tl;dr No, it won't be a viable defense. Background Touch has an established interpretation at common law. The common law is judge-made law. If an offense involving touch existed at common law, then the meaning of touch is "defined" by the judicial opinions themselves. As the comments have noted, you'll be able to find hundreds of years worth of opinions where judges have, by example, determined what qualifies as touching. Putting your hand on someone, yes. Spitting on someone, yes. Blowing from a distance, no. These examples make up the common law definition of touch. But how, you may ask, would the common law evolve to include new information? The answer is clear. Say Jill purposely hits Jack in the face with a shovel. When appearing before the judge, she says, "we have a new understanding of atomic proximity, so technically the atoms in the shovel never made contact with the atoms in Jack!" The judge will say, "that's interesting, but it seems irrelevant to what we're trying to accomplish with the law: Jack still had to go to the hospital. Judgment for Jack." Now the common law has incorporated the new information (...at Jill's expense). Touch isn't defined at the atomic level when interpreting a statute. Some offenses are defined, not by judges, but by statutes enacted by legislatures. If the language in the statute is ambiguous, courts have to interpret its meaning. This is often done by looking at the purpose of the statute or by looking at the plain meaning of the language. Statutory interpretation: purpose Where a court does not employ the plain meaning approach, it will often look for evidence of the drafter's intent. In this case, the court would ask what the purpose of a law like battery is. They'd probably conclude it has to do with preventing harm and offense. In fact, they probably included things like that in the statute itself. So they'd wonder if defining contact at an atomic level would help to prevent harm and offense; that seems unlikely. In so doing, the court may analyze the legislative history. It may look at events that happened around the time the law was enacted: did the legislature propose it because people were hitting each others' faces with shovels? It might even appeal to the state of the common law at the time the statute was enacted for the proper definition. Statutory interpretation: plain meaning First, it might help to look at an example from District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008). There the Court was tasked with interpreting some Second Amendment text. In doing so it said, "we are guided by the principle that '[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning.' Normal meaning may of course include an idiomatic meaning, but it excludes secret or technical meanings." Id at 576-77. Statutory interpretation also makes use of this plain meaning approach. As stated by the Court, "where the language of an enactment is clear, and construction according to its terms does not lead to absurd or impracticable consequences, the words employed are to be taken as the final expression of the meaning intended.” United States v. Missouri Pacific R.R., 278 U.S. 269, 278 (1929); see also Black's Law Dictionary (10th ed. 2014). This is bolstered by the practice of explicitly defining words with technical meanings in a definitions section of the statute. For example, Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code employs a number of terms in a technical sense, and 9-102(a) defines 81 words that are intended to take on a technical meaning. Another example is the Illinois battery statute, 720 ILCS 5: Sec. 12-3. Battery. (a) A person commits battery if he or she knowingly without legal justification by any means (1) causes bodily harm to an individual or (2) makes physical contact of an insulting or provoking nature with an individual. The statute doesn't have a technical definition for "physical contact." So under plain meaning we'd construe it in its common sense. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary (a favorite of U.S. courts) defines touch as, "to bring a bodily part into contact with especially so as to perceive through the tactile sense." That definition implies that tactile sensation is what triggers (2), not any atomic concept of proximity. If you're interested in further reading, proper interpretation of the term "physical contact" came up in the insurance contract setting in Mount Vernon Fire Ins. Co. v. Busby, 219 Cal. App. 4th 876 (2013). united-states
The term &quot;defamation&quot; describes an untrue statement that’s been presented as fact and causes harm to the character of the person it describes. In some jurisdictions an admittedly true statement can still be defamatory. See Can true statements or statements of opnion be libel or defamation in any country? If A claimed that B defamed A, but a court rules that there was no defamation, this might make A's statement legally false. But it will not be defamatory unless it also harms B's reputation. Statements made in court, and in legal filings, have absolute privilege and may not the be basis of a defamation action. Public statements by A accusing B of defamation might be the basis of such an action.