Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:

• In Lozano v. Collier, the 5th Circuit reversed a lower court’s decision on several claims by a Muslim inmate. The inmate argued that his religious practices were burdened by the denial of private facilities for prayer and insufficient access to religious programming. Additionally, he challenged the neutrality of faith-based dormitories and the absence of a Muslim-designated unit.
• In Diocese of Albany v. Harris, the New York Court of Appeals is rehearing a case regarding the New York Department of Financial Services’ mandate that employers cover abortion in their employee health insurance plans. The main issue is whether New York’s narrowing of the exemption to protect only religious groups that primarily teach religion and primarily serve and hire those who share their faith is valid as a religious exemption.
• In Ex parte The Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church, Inc., the Alabama Supreme Court decided that a property ownership dispute between a local Methodist church and its parent church bodies is a civil matter, not ecclesiastical. This decision allows the civil court to resolve the issue using neutral legal principles, as the local church’s property deed does not include a trust clause for the parent bodies.
• In Matter of Ferrelli v State of New York, a New York State appellate court upheld the denial of a religious exemption from the Covid vaccine mandate for court system employees. The court ruled that the mandate was a neutral law of general applicability, subject only to rational basis review.
  In The King (On the application of TTT) v. Michaela Community Schools Trust, a British court upheld a secular school’s policy preventing a Muslim student from using lunchtime for prayer, citing school unity considerations The court noted that the student was aware of the school’s secular nature upon enrollment and found that missed prayers could be made up later. The policy was deemed proportionate, balancing the school’s aims against the rights of Muslim students.
• A new paper by economist Devin G. Pope analyzes religious worship attendance using geodata from smartphones for over 2 million Americans and finds that 73% of people step into a religious place of worship at least once during the year on the primary day of worship. However, only 5% of Americans attend services “weekly”, which is far fewer than the ~22% who report to do so in surveys.