Protecting Religious Liberty, Part 2 [presentation]

This is my attempt at free exercise of religion in a visual nutshell.

It's from a presentation I delivered at a recent panel on Protecting Religious Liberty. The event was co-sponsored by several student organizations at Albany Law School--the Christian Legal Society, the Cardozo Legal Society, and the Muslim Law Student Association--and me.
[The entire event, including the remarks of my knowledgeable and insightful fellow panelists, as well as the Q's & A's with the audience, is available on videocast. (Link below.)]

The presentation was intended as a quick opening primer. A 20 minute overview of that fundamental freedom which is enshrined in the 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and in corresponding provisions of the constitutions of the states as well.

The presentation briefly traced the genesis of freedom of religion in American law. The evolution of that freedom in landmark Supreme Court decisions interpreting and applying the 1st Amendment. The startling about-face by the modern Court that has turned the constitutional guarantee on its head, and has left the protection of religious liberty diluted, uncertain, and erratic. And finally, the ongoing aftermath of a weakened constitutional protection.

An outline of the presentation would look like this:

• Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's struggle to protect religious freedom in Virginia
• Early Supreme Court decisions affording little protection to the Mormons and other religious minorities
• Subsequent Supreme Court landmarks recognizing religious liberty as a fundamental freedom, and protecting it from all restrictions except those necessary for the most compelling reasons
• Modern Supreme Court caselaw discarding those highly protective landmarks
• State high courts deciding whether to follow the Supreme Court's about-face or to adhere to more protective standards for religious liberty

Here is the power point accompaniment to that presentation:

(click to enlarge slide)

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To view the complete slide presentation, open HERE.
(Then, for the best view, click File + Download, and Open the download.)

[The videocast of the entire event--again, including the remarks of my knowledgeable and insightful fellow panelists, as well as the Q's & A's with the audience--is accessible via this link. (https://vimeo.com/64143574. Password: Liberty2013 ) (The quality of the videocast is not very high.)]

Catholics, Contraceptives, and 2nd Class Religious Liberty

[O]nly those interests of the highest order and those not otherwise served can overbalance legitimate claims to the free exercise of religion.
---Chief Justice Warren Burger, Wisconsin v. Yoder, 1973

We have never held that an individual's religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law.
---Justice Antonin Scalia, Oregon v. Smith, 1990

We've been examining this issue for the last 2 posts. We discussed how the law of religious liberty has changed. How religious liberty has been demoted by the Supreme Court.

How free exercise of religion--i.e., the freedom to practice one's religion, to abide by one's religious convictions--was historically recognized as a fundamental right in this country. How it was strongly protected as such (along with free speech, free press, right to counsel in a criminal case, right to equal racial treatment, etc.) by the Court.

How government was not allowed to interfere with that right unless it had a very important reason for doing so, and had no other way to accomplish its purpose. In other words, unless the government really needed to and had no alternative.

That was basic constitutional law. Basic Supreme Court jurisprudence to protect rights considered essential to a free people. Rights that had always included religious liberty.

Along with other fundamental rights, free exercise of religion was considered "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty"--to use Justice Benjamin Cardozo's immortal phrase from his 1937 opinion for the Court in Palko v. Connecticut. Yes, one of those truly indispensable rights about which it could be said--in Cardozo's words again--"neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed."

Yes, that is the right included in the very first clause of the very first amendment of the national charter. That's a pretty good indication of where religious freedom fits in the constitutional hierarchy. And the Supreme Court treated religious liberty accordingly--at least for a while.

(For the previous discussions, see Catholics, Contraceptives, and the (current Supreme Court's) Constitution, March 2, 2012; Catholics, Contraceptives, and the Constitution, Feb. 26, 2012.)

But then an increasingly conservative, law and order Court decided that minority religions didn't need to be accommodated. That minority religions had to tolerate government's beliefs and practices--not vice versa. That minority religions could not interfere with decisions of the majority or with other government authority--not vice versa.

That minority religions had to make exceptions to their beliefs and practices in order to obey government; government no longer had to make exceptions to its laws or rules in order to obey the Constitution's guarantee of religious freedom. Henceforth, laws and other government rules trumped the constitutional right--not vice versa.

Yes, topsy-turvy. Easier. Clearer. Tidier. More convenient. But constitutionally upside down.

Let's finish this series of posts with a look at some of the religious liberty landmarks of the Supreme Court. Specifically, let's take a look at what the Court said about free exercise of religion and about the necessary restrictions that free exercise placed on government--and NOT vice versa.

Catholics, Contraceptives, and the (current Supreme Court's) Constitution

It used to be...

I hate to begin that way.

Whenever someone talks that way I get skeptical. Much of the time, mention of how "it used to be" or of the "good old days" is followed by nonsense. Too often it means the days before civil rights, before equal protection for women, before the law treated gays and lesbians with some semblance of human dignity, before the "activist" Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation and made the Bill of Rights applicable to the states. Yep, America was sure a better place before that time!

No, I'm not talking about any such nonsense. I am talking about how free exercise of religion used to be protected as a fundamental right. As one of those important constitutional rights along with free speech, free press, right to assemble, right to counsel, right against forced confessions, right to a fair trial, right to have a family, right to raise your children, etc. Yes, I'm talking about how free exercise of religion, guaranteed in no uncertain terms in the 1st Amendment, used to be protected.

Because it isn't any more. No it isn't. Not under current Supreme Court case law.

Whatever one thinks about the mandate for contraceptive and morning-after coverage, whatever one thinks about any law or government regulation that interferes with freedom of religion, it is modern Supreme Court case law that has stripped religious freedom of the protection provided for every other fundamental constitutional right. Yes, stripped of the protection given speech, press, assembly, counsel, parenting, etc.


This is hard to believe. Very. But this is no exaggeration. This blog is not talk radio.

Every constitutional rights scholar knows this. Some may even agree that religious freedom should be treated as a 2nd class right. Most would adamantly disagree. But agree or disagree, everyone who teaches, or studies, or practices in the field of constitutional rights knows this to be true. 1st Amendment free exercise of religion is treated as an annoyance, not a fundamental right, under recent Supreme Court decisions.

And no. This is not the result of a liberal Supreme Court. No, this is not the result of an increasingly secular Court that disparages religion.

No, this is, instead, the result of conservative Justices who viewed a minority religion as a nuisance. Who viewed the religious liberty of a minority religion as an affront to the majority's preferred legal order. Who viewed the religious objections of minority religions as invitations to chaos. And who, consistent with that view, ruled that a law's infringement on, or disregard for, religious freedom is virtually irrelevant to the law's validity.