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Garnett on Religious Discrimination

Richard W. Garnett (Notre Dame Law School) has posted Religious Freedom and the Nondiscrimination Norm. The abstract follows.

“Discrimination,” we believe, is wrong. And, because “discrimination” is wrong, we believe that governments like ours – secular, liberal, constitutional governments – may, and should, take regulatory and other steps to prevent, discourage, and denounce it. However, it is not true that “discrimination” is always or necessarily wrong. Nor is it the case that governments always or necessarily should or may regulate or discourage it even when it is. Some wrongs are beyond the authorized reach of government policy; some are too difficult or costly to identify, let alone regulate; others are none of the government’s business.

When we say that “discrimination” is wrong, what we actually mean is that wrongful discrimination is wrong, and when we affirm that governments should oppose it we mean that governments should oppose it when it makes sense, all things considered, and when it is within their constitutionally and morally limited powers to do so. To label a decision or action “discrimination” is simply to note that one factor or another was or will be taken into account in the course of a decision; it is to invite, but not at all to answer, the questions whether that decision or action was or would be wrong, and whether the public authority may or should forbid or discourage it.
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Rahdert on Trends in Taxpayer Standing to Challenge the Establishment Clause

Mark Rahdert (Temple University – James E. Beasley School of Law) has posted Court Reform and Breathing Space Under the Establishment Clause. The abstract follows.  

Flast v. Cohen held that federal taxpayers have standing to challenge government spending for religion. While Frothingham v. Mellon generally prohibits taxpayer standing in federal courts, the Court reasoned that the Establishment Clause specifically prohibits taxation in any amount to fund unconstitutional religious spending. For several decades Flast has been settled law that supplied jurisdiction in many leading establishment cases. But Hein v. Freedom from ReligionFoundation, Inc. and Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn signal that Flast may soon be overruled. This jurisdictional ferment raises two questions: Why this sudden shift? And what does it signify for the Establishment Clause?
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Paulsen on Religious Liberty and the Existence of God

Michael Stokes Paulsen (University of St. Thomas School of Law) has posted The Priority of God (A Theory of Religious Liberty). The abstract follows.

Professor Paulsen argues that religious freedom only makes entire sense as a constitutional arrangement on the premise that God exists, that God makes actual demands on human loyalty and conduct, and that those demands precede and are superior in obligation to those of the State. Religious freedom exists to protect the exercise of plausibly true understandings of God’s actual commands, as against state power, and to disable state power to proscribe — or prescribe — religious exercise. The article explores four possible stances of society toward religious freedom, depending on whether society and state embrace the idea of religious truth (or not) and whether society and state embrace the idea of religious tolerance (or not). It then argues that America’s Constitution’s religion clauses, in their original conception, are predicated in a belief in the possibility of religious truth and the imperative of religious tolerance so that the state does not interfere with private individuals’ and groups’ pursuit of truth. This perspective illuminates many of the issues that have plagued interpretation of the First Amendment religion clauses.

Posted on by Michael Helfand

The Role of Private Law in Litigating Religion: Part II

In my last post, I began responding to Mark’s spot-on question: in order to ensure that parties have a forum to adjudicate disputes turning on religious doctrine or practice, why not simply have parties to an agreement incorporate religious arbitration provisions?  So long as the parties specify a particular institution that will select arbitrators, such a tactic avoids the Establishment Clause problems that might arise from a court having to interpret a religious term in an agreement (such as the panel will be made up of “three Orthodox rabbis” or some sort of religious term used to describe required performance).  If this is true, then why is it I also have been advocating for courts to play a more active role in resolving disputes that turn on religious doctrine or practice?

As I noted previously, I wholeheartedly concur with Mark’s point; this is one of the key reasons why I am a strong proponent of religious arbitration.  Such tribunals can resolve disputes that courts, as a matter of current constitutional law, cannot.  I’ve expressed this point, among others, in two of my recent articles, here and here.

But relying on religious arbitration is only part of the puzzle.  If we take as a goal that we would like to ensure parties have a forum to resolve all disputes – including disputes that turn on religious doctrine or practice – then we’re going to need courts to play a significant role.

True, some disputes can be resolved by religious arbitration.  When sophisticated parties draft agreements, they are likely to craft religious arbitration provisions that ensure disputes arising under the agreement are Read more

Posted on by Michael Helfand

The Role of Private Law in Litigating Religion: Part I

In my last post, I argued that there might be more room for courts to enforce arbitration agreements that require courts to interpret inherently religious provisions.  The example was a provision that required a matter to be arbitrated by “three Orthodox rabbis.”  By contrast, a New York court – in keeping with prevailing interpretation of the Establishment Clause – refused to enforce the provision on the grounds that doing so would require judicial resolution of a religious question.

Mark followed up with a great point: isn’t the best way to deal with these problems by having religious arbitration provisions simply specify a particular institution to appoint religious arbitrators?  This way, courts could enforce the provision without resolving a religious question and then, after the arbitrators issued an award, they could enforce the award by deferring to the arbitrators’ award.  Such an approach ensures the judicial enforcement of a religious arbitration award without any of endorsement or entanglement problems.

Mark is undoubtedly correct; the existence of permanent religious arbitration courts are an important mechanism for insulating religious dispute resolution Read more

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

A Question for Mike Helfand on Religious Arbitration

Mike, thanks for the very interesting posts you’ve been doing this month. I wonder if I could ask about something in your last post, in which you discuss the case with the arbitration agreement calling for “three Orthodox rabbis.” A state court refused to enforce the agreement, since enforcement might have required the court to decide whether the named arbitrators were, in fact, “Orthodox,” which would impermissibly have entangled the court in a religious question. You suggest that the court’s concern with entanglement was overstated, and I have some sympathy with that view.

I wonder whether last week’s Second Circuit decision in Commack Self-Service Kosher Meats has any implications for your argument. In that case, the Second Circuit upheld a NY law requiring sellers of kosher products to indentify which private organization had made the kosher certification. The law did not raise entanglement concerns, the court argued, because the law did not require civil government to certify that particular products were, in fact, “kosher.” The law simply facilitated private decision-making by requiring sellers to disclose the basis for their assertions about their products. If sellers wished to sell, and consumers wished to purchase, products with a “kosher” certification from the United Methodist Church, for example, the state would not object.

Might a mechanism that defers to the decisions of private organizations avoid entanglement issues in arbitration agreements? For example, we could require parties who seek religious arbitrators to specify ahead of time which private associations will name the arbitrators. For example, the parties could agree that any disputes between them “will be resolved by three Orthodox rabbis from the Beth Din of America.” In enforcing such an agreement, a civil court would not be endorsing the proposition that rabbis from the Beth Din of America are, in fact, “Orthodox.” The court would merely be deferring to the parties’ decision to defer to the Beth Din’s decision. Of course, this solution would privilege organizations like the Beth Din over less institutional arbitration mechanisms, and that might pose an establishment problem under current doctrine. But is it worth thinking about?

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Second Circuit Upholds NY’s Kosher Labeling Statute

New York’s Kosher Law Protection Act of 2004 requires sellers who market food products as kosher to label the products “kosher” and identify the person who has made the “kosher” certification. Unlike an earlier statute, which defined “kosher” by reference to Orthodox Jewish kashrut rules, the 2004  act does not define the term or authorize state inspectors to determine whether products satisfy particular kashrut requirements. It simply requires sellers to affix a label and disclose the basis for their assertion that the products are, in fact, kosher.

A New York deli that sells kosher food under the supervision of a non-Orthodox rabbi challenged the 2004 statute under the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses. The deli pointed out that non-Orthodox interpretations of Jewish law do not require kosher food to bear a label, and argued that the labeling requirement thus amounted to an establishment of Orthodox Judaism. The deli also argued that the labeling requirement burdened its free exercise of a non-Orthodox form of Judaism.

Yesterday, the Second Circuit dismissed these claims. With respect to establishment, the court applied the  Lemon test. It held that the 2004 act had the secular purpose of preventing consumer fraud and did not advance religion. It’s true that the labeling requirement coincided with Orthodox Jewish practice, the court reasoned, but that did not amount to a legislative endorsement of Orthodox Judaism. A reasonable observer would see the labeling requirement as a neutral guide for consumers who wished to purchase kosher food — 70% of whom, the court noted, were not even Jewish, according to market research (who knew?). And, because the statute did not require the government to assess the correctness of a kosher designation, but only required sellers to identify the private persons that had made the designation, the statute did not threaten any entanglement with religion. With respect to the free exercise claim, the court held under Smith that the 2004 act was a neutral and generally applicable consumer protection law that did not violate plaintiff’s rights. The case is Commack Self-Service Kosher Meats v. Hooker, 2012 WL 1633143  (May 10, 2012).

Posted on by Michael Helfand

Litigating Religion Redux

I’ve been editing the latest draft of my forthcoming article “Litigating Religion” in anticipation of presenting the piece at this year’s Stanford/Yale/Harvard Junior Faculty Forum (I’ve also been pleased to have the piece discussed previously on the CLR Forum here and here).  The primary thesis of the article is that the Establishment Clause should not be interpreted to prohibit courts from adjudicating religious questions; instead, it should be interpreted to prohibit courts from adjudicating claims properly within the province of religious institutions.  Put differently, courts should resolve religious disputes where no other religious institution is capable of doing so.

One section of the article is dedicated to discussing court cases that raise religious questions, but where there is no religious institution that has an interest and the authority to resolve the dispute.  Given that I’m always looking for more examples, I was particularly pleased to see a post from Eugene Volokh about a 2007 case (only recently posted on Westlaw) that fits the bill where a court refused to enforce an arbitration provision that called for the appointment of “Three Orthodox Rabbis” as arbitrators.    The court refused to enforce the provision on the grounds that “[t]he Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prohibits a civil court from resolving issues concerning religious doctrine and practice.”  Thus determining whether an arbitrator is Orthodox – so as to satisfy the arbitration agreement – would run afoul of the First Amendment.   Instead, the court severed this provision from the arbitration agreement and authorized each party to select an arbitrator and have those two arbitrators select a third.  As the court noted, “[a]lthough the provision requiring orthodox arbitrators is unenforceable, the parties are free to select arbitrators, who in their own judgment, meet the religious requirement.”

But is this the preferred outcome?

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Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Chicago-Kent Law Review to Publish Symposium on Neutrality

The Chicago-Kent Law Review will publish a symposium, “The Future of the Establishment Clause: Neutrality, Religion, or Avoidance?”, next month. Edited by Bruce Ledewitz (Duquesne), the symposium will discuss

the future of the Establishment Clause, confronting three interrelated questions: 1) If the Court is to reaffirm government neutrality toward religion, can such neutrality coexist with resurgent popular religious belief at the same time that it serves the needs of a growing national secularism?; 2) Conversely, if the Court is to permit government embrace of religion, can it do so without alienating the large numbers of  nontheistic believers and nonbelievers?; and 3) How far can the Court take the turn to standing before it undermines noneconomic approaches to injury-in-fact in all of constitutional law and before it renders even classic violations of the Establishment Clause essentially unchallengeable?

Contributors include Richard Albert (Boston College), Christopher Lund (Wayne State), Samuel Levine (Touro), Zachary Calo (Valparaiso), and Mark Rahdert (Temple). For more information, please contact Editor in Chief Maggie Master at the Chicago-Kent Law Review.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 1 Comment

Mojave Desert Cross Case Settles

On Monday, a federal district court in California approved a settlement ending the long-running litigation in Salazar v. Buono, the Mojave Desert Cross case. The case, the most recent Supreme Court ruling on public religious displays, involves a Latin cross on a war memorial on federal land in the Mojave Desert. After a district court enjoined the government from displaying the cross as a violation of the Establishment Clause, the government attempted to convey the land to a private association, the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The district court ruled that the conveyance violated the terms of the injunction, but, in 2010, a divided Supreme Court reversed and remanded for further consideration.

This week’s settlement allows the government to convey the land to the VFW in exchange for other property. The National Park Service will install and maintain a fence with signage indicating that the land is privately owned and maintain roads allowing for “safe and suitable” public access. The government will not replace the cross, which someone stole after the Supreme Court’s decision, but the new owners are of course free to do so, and in fact, the VFW has a cross ready. The government will restore the plaque designating the spot as a national war memorial and has reserved the right to have Park Rangers explain to visitors what they’re looking at. H/T:  Religion Clause.