Ban on sharia law
A ban on sharia law is legislation that prohibits the application or implementation of Islamic law (Sharia) in courts in any civil (non-religious) jurisdiction. In the United States for example, various states have "banned Sharia law," or a ballot measure was passed that "prohibits the state’s courts from considering foreign, international or religious law." these include Alabama, Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee. In the Canadian province of Ontario, family law disputes are arbitrated only under Ontario law. United States Constitutional prohibitions and accommodations Because of the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution, no religious tradition can be established as the basis of laws that apply to everyone, including any form of sharia, Christian canon law, Jewish halakha, or rules of dharma from Indian religions. Laws must be passed in a secular fashion, not by religious authorities. The Free Exercise Clause allows residents to practice any religion or no religion, and there is often controversy about separation of church and state and the balance between these two clauses when the government does or does not accommodate any particular religious practice (for example blue laws that require stores to be closed on Sunday, the Christian holy day). Direct consultation of any religious law, including any form of sharia, is relatively rare in U.S. jurisprudence and is generally limited to circumstances where the government is accommodating the religious belief of a specific person. This occurs mainly in matters of arbitration and family law. For example, the law may allow parties to submit a dispute for binding arbitration to a mutually agreed-upon religious authority; mandatory arbitration by a specified or mutually-agreed arbitrator is also a common clause in commercial and labor union contracts. Couples with the same religious beliefs may wish to construct marriage contracts and conduct divorces in concordance with those beliefs, and people may also wish to arrange wills and other financial matters in accordance with their own religious principles. If presented as evidence, devotion to peaceful religious principles, along with many other aspects of personality, is commonly considered when judging the character of a person before the law, for example during sentencing or a parole hearing. Despite the Free Exercise Clause, the 1878 Supreme Court decision in Reynolds v. United States (which concerned the conflict of the Mormon practice of polygamy with anti-bigamy laws) affirmed that secular laws still apply when they contradict religious practices, unless a superseding law establishes a right to a religious accommodation. The American Bar Association has opposed legislation banning foreign law or sharia as unnecessary, given that existing safeguards against foreign law already protect against rules that are contrary to American foreign policy, including discrimination on the basis of gender and religion. Background of controversy In June 2009, a family court judge in Hudson County, New Jersey denied a restraining order to a woman who testified that her husband, a Muslim, had raped her. The judge said he did not believe the man "had a criminal desire to or intent to