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In a lawsuit filed last year against two environmentalist groups, attorney Stephen Young (representing a Minnesota loggers' organization) said the groups were imposing "the religion of deep ecology" by opposing federal timber sales—and were thus violating the constitutional separation of church and state. U.S. District Court Judge James Rosenbaum not only threw the case out, but he called it "an utter waste of the court's time" and fined the lawyer $5,000 for the "frivolous" lawsuit.

"[The series] portrays witches in positive ways … but it does not portray my religious beliefs," Chad Anctil of the Witches' League for Public Awareness tells the Associated Press. "It is difficult for the religion to be taken seriously when books like this portray it as magic." Still, says the article, most practitioners of Wicca find the stories enjoyable—and like the fact that sorcery isn't automatically seen as something dark and evil.

"The legal clashes Jehovah's Witnesses had with government authorities over their proselytizing and practices led to an astonishing total of 23 separate Supreme Court rulings between 1938 and 1946—surely more than any other single religious organization engendered before or since," writes Tony Mauro, Supreme Court correspondent for American Lawyer. "So frequently did Witnesses raise core First Amendment issues that Justice Harlan Fiske Stone wrote, 'The Jehovah's Witnesses ought to have an endowment in view of the aid which they give in solving the legal problems of civil liberties.'" The opinion piece notes next month's 60th anniversary of "the most infamous Jehovah's Witness decision, one the Supreme Court got completely wrong: Minersville School District vs. Gobitis."

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May (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44