RELIGION HEADLINES

(SRN NEWS) – An Australian nurse has been charged with making threats after she appeared in an online video saying she would not treat Israeli patients.  Sarah Abu Lebdeh, a Muslim, faces three federal offenses and has been released on bail.  She and another nurse, Ahmed Nadir, were suspended from Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital in Sydney two months ago over an online exchange with an Israeli influencer.  Abu Lebdeh said she wouldn’t treat Israeli patients while Nadir said he had killed Israelis. The hospital examined patient records and found no evidence that the nurses had harmed patients.

The American Civil Liberties Union is seeking to represent two restaurant workers in a gender identity discrimination lawsuit after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission bowed out.  The agency took that action to comply with President Trump’s recent executive order against the federal government promoting transgenderism. The lawsuit against a Culver’s restaurant in Clarkston, Michigan claims that a woman who is living as a man was fired after complaining that a co-worker failed to use her preferred pronouns.  In 2023, the EEOC received more than 3,000 complaints alleging transgender discrimination.

Iowa has become the first state to remove so-called gender identity protections from its civil rights code.  Republican Governor Kim Reynolds has signed a bill into law just a day after the Republican-controlled legislature approved the measure.  The new legislation removes gender identity as a protected class from Iowa’s civil rights code.  It also explicitly defines female and male, as well as gender.  President Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office to formalize a definition of the two sexes at the federal level, leading several Republican-led legislatures to push for similar laws.

A judge has continued to block President Trump’s plan to pull federal funding from institutions that provide sex-change operations on children.  U.S. District Court Judge Lauren King in Seattle issued the permanent injunction over the weekend.  She had previously granted a two-week restraining order after the Democratic attorneys general of Washington, Oregon and Minnesota sued the Trump administration.  Colorado has since joined the case.  King heard arguments before blocking most of the president’s order pending a final decision on the merits of the case.