Next month at Princeton University, I’ll be participating in a film screening and panel discussion on religious liberty in the United States, “Free Exercise: America’s Story of Religious Liberty.” The event is sponsored by Princeton’s James Madison Program, where I spent a wonderful semester a few years ago. Details are available here. Friends of the Forum in the area, stop by and say hello!
Around the Web
Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- In Kristofersdottir v. CVS Health Corp., a nurse-practitioner filed a complaint in the Southern District of Florida alleging that CVS revoked all religious accommodations that allowed employees to refuse to prescribe contraceptives, which is the accommodation plaintiff had for over 7 years.
- In Dad’s Place of Bryan, Ohio v. City of Bryan, a Christian church filed suit in the Northern District of Ohio, alleging that the city has violated the First Amendment’s Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses, as well as RLUIPA, by charging the church’s pastor with 18 criminal counts for allowing homeless persons to reside on the property for an extended amount of time in violation of city zoning rules.
- In Uzomechina v. Episcopal Diocese of New Jersey, the District of New Jersey dismissed racial discrimination and wrongful discharge claims brought by a priest who was fired after he was allegedly falsely accused of financial and sexual misconduct. However, the court allowed the priest’s defamation claim, which he alleges that the Diocese passed on false information about him to his subsequent employer, to proceed.
- In Carter v. Virginia Real Estate Board, a Virginia trial court held unconstitutional a portion of Virginia’s Fair Housing Law that said: “use of words or symbols associated with a particular religion . . . shall be prima facie evidence of an illegal preference under this chapter that shall not be overcome by a general disclaimer.” A realtor included references to Jesus and a Bible verse in her email signature and was investigated, but the court invalidated the statute, saying the presumption of animus was unconstitutional.
- A Michigan hospital agreed to pay a $50,000 settlement in a Title VII discrimination lawsuit alleging that the hospital had refused to hire an employee who had objected on religious grounds to receiving a flu shot. The settlement prohibits the hospital from refusing to hire applicants because of their sincerely held religious beliefs opposing such a vaccine mandate.
- In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi dedicated the Ram Mandir, a Hindu Temple located on a contested holy site once home to a 16th-century mosque. Critics allege that the temple represents an effort by Modi to elevate the Hindu religion in India’s public life.
A New Biography of Tocqueville
I tell students in my law-and-religion seminar here at St. John’s, if you want to understand the sociology of religion in the United States, you can’t do better than to start with Tocqueville. Some of his observations are familiar, for example, on the role of voluntary religious associations in helping to check tyranny. Some are not, for example, on the tendency of religion in the United States to lead towards pantheism. All are insightful.
This month, Princeton University Press has released a new biography of the French aristocrat who understood American democracy better than anyone else, The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville, by historian and Tocqueville scholar Olivier Zunz (University of Virginia). The publisher’s description follows:
In 1831, at the age of twenty-five, Alexis de Tocqueville made his fateful journey to America, where he observed the thrilling reality of a functioning democracy. From that moment onward, the French aristocrat would dedicate his life as a writer and politician to ending despotism in his country and bringing it into a new age. In this authoritative and groundbreaking biography, leading Tocqueville expert Olivier Zunz tells the story of a radical thinker who, uniquely charged by the events of his time, both in America and France, used the world as a laboratory for his political ideas.
Placing Tocqueville’s dedication to achieving a new kind of democracy at the center of his life and work, Zunz traces Tocqueville’s evolution into a passionate student and practitioner of liberal politics across a trove of correspondence with intellectuals, politicians, constituents, family members, and friends. While taking seriously Tocqueville’s attempts to apply the lessons of Democracy in America to French politics, Zunz shows that the United States, and not only France, remained central to Tocqueville’s thought and actions throughout his life. In his final years, with France gripped by an authoritarian regime and America divided by slavery, Tocqueville feared that the democratic experiment might be failing. Yet his passion for democracy never weakened.
Giving equal attention to the French and American sources of Tocqueville’s unique blend of political philosophy and political action, The Man Who Understood Democracy offers the richest, most nuanced portrait yet of a man who, born between the worlds of aristocracy and democracy, fought tirelessly for the only system that he believed could provide both liberty and equality.
Around the Web
Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- In St. Hillaire v. Montefiore Medical Center, a New York federal court ruled against a hospital manager’s religious discrimination claim over a denied Covid vaccine exemption. The court noted the hospital’s legal obligation to follow state mandates, which made the plaintiff’s exemption as a registered nurse impossible without incurring undue hardship.
- In Russo v. Patchogue-Medford School District, a New York federal court ruled that the school district’s refusal to accommodate a psychologist’s religious objection to Covid mandates did not violate Title VII. The court found the state’s test-or-vaccination requirement to be a neutral law and determined that the plaintiff’s request for remote work, which involved reducing job responsibilities, constituted an undue hardship for the employer.
- In Melton v. Union Hill Missionary Baptist Church, the Mississippi Supreme Court vacated a lower court’s ruling in a pastor-dismissal dispute. The court declared the chancellor’s involvement in a congregational vote was unconstitutional, stating it breached church-state separation under the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine.
- In Kestenbaum v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, students sued Harvard University in a Massachusetts federal court, alleging Title VI Civil Rights Act violations. The complaint accuses Harvard of not protecting Jewish students from widespread anti-Jewish sentiment and discrimination, contrasting its approach to other forms of bias. The suit demands institutional changes, including disciplinary actions and antisemitism training.
- A Pennsylvania appellate court in South Hills Catholic Academy v. Department of Human Services ruled against the school’s claim that state regulations infringed on its religious freedoms. The court found no violation of religious rights, as the regulations merely required compliance with civil rights laws, which do not apply to religious schools.
- The State Department, following the International Religious Freedom Act, designated several countries as concerns for religious freedom violations. Among those listed as Countries of Particular Concern are China, Iran, and Russia, while Azerbaijan was included on the Special Watch List. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom expressed disappointment over Nigeria and India’s exclusion from the list.
A New Book on Locke, Religious Freedom, and Christianity
Scholars debate the extent to which Lockean ideas about religious freedom, which were so important to the Framers, are consistent with Christianity. An interesting-looking new book from the University Press of Kansas, Everyone Orthodox to Themselves: John Locke and His American Students on Religion and American Society, argues that Lockean liberalism is consistent only with a specific kind of Christianity, namely, a rationalist, non-dogmatic sort. The author, politics professor John Colman (Ave Maria), apparently maintains that conservative Christians are mistaken when they think their commitments compatible with religious freedom. Readers can decide for themselves. Here is the description from the publisher’s website:
Religious liberty is one of the hallmarks of American democracy, but the principal architects of this liberty believed that it was only compatible with a certain form of Christianity—namely, a liberal, rational, Christianity. Conservative and postliberal champions of the freedom of religion often ignore this point, sometimes even arguing that orthodox Christianity was, or should be, at the root of democratic liberty.
Everyone Orthodox to Themselves, John Colman’s close study of the religious views and political theologies of John Locke, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and Thomas Jefferson, shows otherwise. Colman demonstrates that Locke and his three American students specifically took aim at the idea of orthodoxy, which they argued continuously tempted its believers to try to impose an artificial uniformity upon the religious diversity that naturally exists in society and thought it necessary to advance a more rational, nondogmatic Christianity given the threat they saw religious orthodoxy posed to a free, liberal society.
While recent arguments have endorsed the idea that there is a crisis of liberalism that can only be met by the revival of more orthodox forms of religious devotion, Colman argues that, according to some of the most prominent American Founders and their philosophic predecessors, such orthodoxy is incompatible with religious freedom and the right to free inquiry. Everyone Orthodox to Themselves demonstrates that only a nondogmatic, rationalist Christianity could be made a friend rather than an adversary to the inalienable right of religious liberty.
Colman’s work reveals how the reform of Christianity, and with it the inculcation of a particular theological disposition, is necessary to secure religious liberty and the right of free inquiry. The book also establishes the importance of Locke’s Reasonableness of Christianity for his larger argument for toleration.
Legal Spirits 056: Can the NY State Thruway Ban Chick-fil-A?
In this episode, we discuss a bill pending in New York that would require future fast food restaurants at rest stops on the State Thruway to open seven days a week. The bill expressly targets Chick-fil-A, which closes on Sundays in line with the owners’ religious commitments. Does the bill violate Chick-fil-A’s free exercise rights under the US and NY State Constitutions? And what does this controversy suggest about religious practice in the US? Listen in!
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Around the Web
Here are some important law and religion news stories from around the web:
- The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review a decision blocking Idaho’s nearly total abortion ban, specifically examining whether the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act overrides state laws like Idaho’s Defense of Life Act. President Biden criticized the decision for allowing Idaho’s nearly complete abortion ban to be reinstated.
- In United States v. Gallagher, a Tennessee federal court limited the extent to which defendants, facing charges for blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic, can reference their religious beliefs. The court stated that discussion of religion can be used to establish intent or purpose, but could not be used as a defense.
- In Church of the Celestial Heart v. Garland, a California federal judge refused to dismiss a RFRA suit challenging the Controlled Substance Act, which restricts the church’s use of Ayahuasca, a plant-based psychedelic drug.
- The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is being sued by a Jewish Israeli student claiming discrimination and hostility; the complaint alleges biased admissions and increased harassment after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
- A Yale professor has filed a sex discrimination suit against the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York for rejecting her application to become Abyssinian’s senior pastor.
- Pope Francis, in his recent remarks to the Diplomatic Corps at the Holy See, called for a global ban on surrogate motherhood, stating that a child should never be the basis of a commercial contract.
A History of Evangelicals and Religious Freedom
Here is an interesting-looking collection of essays from Baylor on the history of Evangelical Christians and politics–especially, the politics of religious freedom: The Gospel and Religious Freedom: Historical Studies in Evangelicalism and Political Engagement. Like most religious communities, Evangelicals have a mixed record in this regard, supporting religious freedom in some contexts and opposing it in others. The book’s chapters cover episodes from Wilberforce to Trump. The editor is David Bebbington (University of Stirling-Scotland). Here’s the publisher’s description:
Religious freedom as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights remains a perennial concern across the globe. Over the centuries many evangelicals have not enjoyed this right in practice, but they have generally advocated its acceptance, especially to allow the spread of the gospel. Not always, however, have they supported freedom for religious groups besides themselves and sometimes they have endorsed discrimination against other bodies.
The Gospel and Religious Freedom explores the complex relationship in theory and practice between evangelicals and religious freedom, covering periods from the eighteenth century to the present. The volume includes studies of the intellectual lineage of asserting the free exercise of religion, of evangelicals in the United States who endorsed religious liberty in the early twentieth century, and of recent American evangelical political pressure on behalf of freedom of religion at home and abroad. Other contributions address the evangelical defense of the cause in British territories in the age of William Wilberforce, the apparent threat to religious liberty by Roman Catholics throughout the world, an evangelical attempt to restrain Muslim laws in Nigeria, and the persecution of believers by Communists in Eastern Europe and China.
Evangelical Christians emerge as preeminently concerned with evangelism but in other respects diverse in their responses to challenges in various global regions. This volume is designed to demonstrate something of the significance of the evangelical movement in the history of the modern world.
Around the Web
Here are some important law-and-religion news stories from around the web:
- In Carrero v. City of Chicago, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois allowed a city employee, who was placed on unpaid leave for refusing to comply with the city’s Covid vaccine mandate because of religious objections, to move ahead with claims under the Free Exercise Clause and the Illinois Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The employee was denied an exemption from the mandate because he did not bring forth a signed affirmation of belief from his pastor, who had a policy of not signing the forms.
- In Chaudhry v. Community Unit School District 300 Board of Education, the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois dismissed Establishment Clause, Due Process and Equal Protection claims by Muslim parents against an Illinois school board where a teacher allegedly convinced their daughter to convert to Christianity. The court found that under Monell, a school board cannot be held liable under the theory of respondeat superior.
- In Craven v. Shriners Hospital for Children, the United States District Court for the District of Oregon dismissed a Title VII religious discrimination claim brought by a hospital maintenance technician who was fired after he was denied a religious exemption from the employer’s Covid vaccine mandate because the technician had not adequately alleged that his objections to the vaccine were religious in nature.
- In Markley v. Liberty University, Inc., a Virginia state trial court held that the ministerial exception doctrine does not prevent a former Administrative Dean from suing Liberty University, a Christian institution, where the school terminated his employment because he engaged in whistleblower activities. The court found that the plaintiff was not a “minister” because his responsibilities did not include leading religious organizations or worship services, nor did they include serving as a minister of the faith.
- The EEOC announced that Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta will pay $45,000 in damages to a former maintenance employee who brought a Title VII suit after the employee was denied a religious exemption from the healthcare system’s flu vaccine requirement. Under the settlement, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta agreed to modify its religious exemption policy to presume eligibility for employees who work away from patients and other staff.
- In another Title VII suit, the EEOC announced that Triple Canopy, Inc. will pay $110,759 in damages to an employee who was denied a religious accommodation of his Christian belief that men must have beards after the employee was unable to provide support for the validity of his beliefs. The company also agreed, in the settlement, to institute a new religious accommodation policy.
Fed Soc Panel on 303 Creative
Thanks to the Federalist Society for inviting me to participate on a panel yesterday at the annual faculty conference, underway in Washington. I joined Amy Sepinwall (Wharton) and Dale Carpenter (Southern Methodist) for a discussion of 303 Creative, the wedding vendor case. Among the issues we addressed were the application of strict scrutiny to speech compulsions; the distinction between speech and conduct; and discriminating based on message vs. discrimination based on status. The video is linked below: