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Griffin on Why Hosanna-Tabor Misinterprets the First Amendment

Leslie C. Griffin (University of Houston Law Center) has posted The Sins of Hosanna-Tabor.  The abstract follows.

The Supreme Court has lost sight of individual religious freedom. In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. EEOC, the Court for the first time recognized the ministerial exception, a court-created doctrine that holds that the First Amendment requires the dismissal of many employment discrimination cases against religious employers. The Court ruled unanimously that Cheryl Perich, an elementary school teacher who was fired after she tried to return to school from disabilities leave, could not pursue an antidiscrimination lawsuit against her employer. Read more

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Garnett on the Role of Religious Communities

Richard W. Garnett (Notre Dame Law School) has posted Religious Freedom and (and in) Institutions.  The abstract follows.

This paper is a contribution to a volume of essays dealing with a range of contemporary challenges – challenges posed by new questions, and by new forces – to religious liberty. It considers the role that religious communities, groups, and associations play – and the role that they should they play – in our thinking and conversations about religious freedom and church-state relations. And, its primary claim is that the values and goods that the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses embody and protect are well served by a civil-society landscape that is thick with churches (and mediating institutions and associations of all kinds) and by legal rules that reflect their importance. These institutions contribute in distinctive ways to the reality of religious freedom under law.