Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Sixth Circuit Holds that “Secular, Profit-Seeking” Corporations are Not “Persons” under RFRA

In a terse and unsatisfying opinion, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has held that “secular, profit-seeking” corporations have no standing to sue under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The plaintiffs, Roman Catholic owners of a closely held corporation that manufactures automotive and medical products, alleged that the HHS Contraception Mandate violated their religious free exercise under RFRA. After holding that the individual plaintiffs did not have standing, the court said this about the corporation’s standing:

Looking to RFRA’s relevant context, we find strong indications that Congress did not intend to include corporations primarily organized for secular, profit-seeking purposes as “persons” under RFRA. Again, Congress’s express purpose in enacting RFRA was to restore Free Exercise Clause claims of the sort articulated in Sherbert and Yoder, claims which were fundamentally personal . . . .

While the Supreme Court has recognized the rights of sole proprietors under the Free Exercise Clause during this period, it has never recognized similar rights on behalf of corporations pursuing secular ends for profit . . . .

Moreover, the Supreme Court has observed that the purpose of the Free Exercise Clause “is to secure religious liberty in the individual by prohibiting any invasions thereof by civil authority.” Sch. Dist. of Abington Twp., Pa. v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 223 (1963) (emphasis added); see also Conestoga, 2013 WL 3845365, at *5 (“[W]e simply cannot understand how a for-profit, secular corporation–apart from its owners–can exercise religion.”).

Where to begin? The court recognizes that its emphasis on religious freedom that is “personal” or “individual” has, in fact, been totally irrelevant in many, many cases involving the Free Exercise Clause and RFRA in which the plaintiff corporations have prevailed. So why emphasize it? The distinction can do nothing by itself to justify the outcome, and the court seems to say as much.

“Personal” vs. “Group or Corporate” is doing no work here. Instead, there are two phrases that ground the decision: “secular” and “profit-seeking.” And, as I have said before, if courts are to deny religious freedom claims by corporations on these grounds–on the ground of a distinction between the secular and the religious, on the one hand, or of a distinction between profit-seeking and non-profit-seeking, on the other–then they will need to develop a theory of what “secular” means, and what “religious” means, and why the distinction matters in law. Or, they will need to make arguments about what precisely the difference is between “for profit” and “nonprofit” in this context and why it matters.

I should say straightaway that there may well be a discussion to be had, and arguments to be made, about the legal significance of the distinction between the “secular” and the “religious.” I recommend especially much of Steven D. Smith’s recent work on this issue, including this article. But there is not a single word in this decision about that distinction. Likewise, there is nothing about the conceptual distinction between for-profit and nonprofit in this specific context and its import (there is, at the end of the decision, a dubious interpretation of RFRA’s legislative history, but there is nothing of the sort of conceptual work that would be necessary to sustain a holding of this kind).

The Sixth Circuit joins the Third Circuit in reaching this result. Both courts are at odds with the Tenth Circuit. The case is Autocam Corp. v. Sebelius.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian

Rienzi on the Abercrombie & Fitch Case

At the Becket Fund’s blog, Mark Rienzi has an interesting analysis of the Abercrombie & Fitch case I discussed last week:

The decision is important for two reasons.  First, it is a reminder that, in a religiously diverse country, people of different faiths will have different needs.  Some workers need to wear headscarves, some need Saturdays off, some cannot assist with abortions or capital punishment.  The sensible response to most of these differences is to accommodate them—to recognize that our society is filled with wonderful differences, and to find ways to work around those differences without kicking people out of their jobs.

The case is also important for arguments the Administration chose not to make.  It did not argue that Ms. Khan had forfeited her religious freedom rights when she voluntarily went to work for a profit-making company.  It did not say that she would only have religious liberty if she cabined her job search to Muslim religious organizations.  It did not say that because she was earning money in the commercial marketplace she had somehow forfeited her right to conduct herself in accordance with her religion.

Read the whole thing.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 2 Comments

The Abercrombie Look

Staff at Abercrombie & Fitch Store, London (BBC)

Here’s an interesting case that reveals much about the way American mass marketers view religion and “diversity.” This week, a federal district court in California ruled in favor of Umme-Hani Khan, a Muslim teenager who sued her employer, the retailer Abercrombie & Fitch, for religious discrimination. A&F fired Khan, whose job required her to restock clothes on the sales floor of an A&F store in San Mateo, because she insisted on wearing a Muslim headscarf, or hijab, on the job. The headscarf, A&F told her, was inconsistent with the firm’s “Look Policy,” a set of grooming and clothing requirements for employees.

The Look Policy is meant to project a consistent A&F identity to consumers who favor the brand–mostly kids between 18-22. You can see an illustration in the photo above, from A&F’s London store. Head coverings are out; shirts, apparently, are optional. A&F occasionally grants exemptions from the policy to employees who wish to wear religious garb or symbols, but only if the garb or symbols are not visible to others. Just judging by the outfits in the photo, that can’t be the case very often.

But back to Ms. Khan. A&F obviously fired Khan because of her attempt to exercise her religion. Under federal and state employment laws, though, a firm can fire an employee if accommodating the employee’s religious practice would create an undue burden for the firm. Here, A&F argued, allowing Khan to wear her headscarf would create such a burden. Allowing departures from the Look Policy would confuse customers and detract from their in-store experience. And consumer confusion would injure A&F’s brand identity and detract from sales. Simply put, allowing Khan to wear the headscarf would cost A&F money.

The problem was that A&F didn’t show that it had lost any sales because of Khan’s hijab. A&F speculated that consumers would be confused or irritated by the sight of Khan in a headscarf, but could point to no actual incidents. Nor did A&F offer convincing evidence about the negative effect employee headscarves had on sales at other clothing firms. On the record presented, the court ruled, there was no reason to believe that allowing Khan to wear her headscarf would pose an undue hardship for A&F . So Khan prevailed on her claim.

All this is straightforward employment discrimination law. What makes the case interesting is what it reveals about the mindset of mass-market retailers like A&F. Like many such retailers, A&F makes a big deal about its commitment to “diversity,” including religious diversity. According to its website, A&F recognizes the “25 different dimensions of diversity that make up who we are” (only 25?), such as “race, gender, family, sexual orientation, work experience, physical ability, and religion.” So it’s a little strange that A&F would fire a teenage stocking clerk who did nothing more offensive than wear a headscarf to work for religious reasons, and compound the PR mistake by litigating the case in federal court. What gives?

I can think of three possibilities. First, the people at A&F are clueless. Other recent PR disasters for A&F–like the suggestion that the firm doesn’t want heavy women wearing its clothes–render this explanation somewhat plausible, but I doubt it. You don’t become a successful retailer by being clueless. Second, the people at A&F are hypocrites. They talk a good game about tolerance and diversity, but are secretly bigots. This explanation is more plausible than the first, but still unsatisfying. I expect the people at A&F, especially the marketers steeped in our media culture, have internalized the diversity imperative. They really do wish to be “inclusive” and would be shocked to find out they’re not.

So here’s a third explanation. In our mass-market culture, “diversity” means something very specific: the right to purchase and wear (but principally purchase) the same products as everybody else. Wherever you come from, whoever your parents are, whichever God you pray to–whatever the precise mixture of those “25 different dimensions of diversity” that make you who you are–you have a right to the Abercrombie Look. To hold that diversity means something more than that, that it might require people to tolerate religious garb and symbols in the workplace, could be divisive and bad for business. And who knows where it would lead? Someone might actually try to wear a visible cross to work.  

The case is Khan v. Abercrombie & Fitch, 2013 WL 4726137 (N.D.Cal. 2013)).

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Third Circuit Denies Rehearing En Banc in Corporate Free Exercise Case

Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied rehearing en banc in Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The vote was 7 to 5.

In light of the many problems with Judge Cowen’s opinion for the panel majority as well as the circuit split that is developing over the issue of corporate free exercise of religion (for constitutional and statutory purposes) and the dichotomous confusions that the issue is generating (religious vs. secular, for-profit vs. non-profit), it would not be surprising if one or more of these cases found their way to the Supreme Court relatively soon. On the other hand, these kinds of predictions have an uncanny way of being wrong.

Posted on by Mark Movsesian · 5 Comments

More on Yoga in the Public Schools

Yoga Class at Encinitas School (NYT)

Last month, a California state court ruled that including yoga in an elementary school phys ed program does not violate the Establishment Clause. The program was funded by a half-million dollar grant from the Jois Foundation, a private organization that promotes the form of yoga known as Ashtanga. The court ruled that the Encinitas Union School District had scrubbed religious references from the classes, so that what remained was simply a fitness and stress reduction program for kids. To use the language of the so-called “endorsement test,” the court concluded that a reasonable observer would not believe the school district had impermissibly endorsed a religion–in this case, Hinduism.

This week, the Oxford University Press blog published an interesting interview with Candy Gunther Brown, an Indiana University religious studies professor who served as an expert witness for the plaintiffs in the case. Brown argues convincingly that Ashtanga yoga is in fact deeply religious. “Ashtanga,” she says, “emphasizes postures and breathing on the premise that these practices will ‘automatically’ lead practitioners to …  ‘become one with God’… ‘whether they want it or not'”:

Although EUSD officials reacted to parent complaints by modifying some practices, EUSD classes still always begin with “Opening Sequence” (Surya Namaskara) [a prayer to the sun god] and end with “lotuses” and “resting” (aka shavasana or “corpse”—which encourages reflection on one’s death to inspire virtuous living), and teach symbolic gestures such as “praying hands” (anjalimudra) and “wisdom gesture” (jnanamudra), which in Ashtanga yoga symbolize union with the divine and instill religious feelings.

It’s quite possible for people, especially kids, to be influenced by these religious messages, she says:

Scientific research shows that practicing yoga can lead to religious transformations. For example, Kristin is a Catholic who started Ashtanga for the stretching; she now prefers Ashtanga’s “eight limbs” to the “Ten Commandments.” Kids who learn yoga in public schools may also be learning religion.

Perhaps Brown overstates the difficulty of separating religious and non-religious elements in yoga, I don’t know. After reading her interview, though, the question I have is this. How could anyone not think Ashtanga yoga is religious, and that by sponsoring this class–especially with funding from an organization that promotes Ashtanga’s religious message–the school district has endorsed religion in a manner that current law forbids?

Perhaps, with our deeply Protestant religious culture, Americans simply dismiss the notion that physical practices can be genuinely “religious.” Religion is a matter of mind and spirit, not body; stretching is purely physical, just a nice way to relax. Stretching isn’t prayer, after all. Brown’s point, however–and it is a very important one–is that these practices are a kind of prayer. Ashtanga yoga purports to instill religious feelings and lead one to God, whether one intends it or not. (In fact, Hindus might find the claim that yoga is just a stretching exercise rather insulting). And the school district has students participate in these prayers, not just learn about them from a book. The Supreme Court has said the Constitution forbids even displaying the Ten Commandments inside a public school classroom, lest students feel pressured to read and meditate on them. But this is OK?

Let’s try a thought experiment. Orthodox Christianity has a tradition known as hesychasm, in which hermits discipline themselves to meditate, shut out the world, and experience God inside them. It’s a very difficult mystical practice, not for everyone–though some people like to dabble. Apparently it gives great inner peace. The key element is repetition of the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have Mercy on Me, a Sinner.” Suppose some enterprising Orthodox Christian foundation adapted these practices, put the Jesus Prayer in an esoteric language, and proffered the package to a public school district as a stress-reduction program for kids. Would anyone think such a program constitutional under present law?

The plaintiffs in the case have indicated they plan to appeal. I hope they do, because this could turn out to be be a very significant case. As Eastern religious practices continue to seep into mainstream culture, situations like this are bound to recur. They may lead to a change in the way Americans understand religion.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Walsh on the Third Circuit’s Contraception Mandate Decision

Center for Law and Religion friend Kevin Walsh has a thoughtful and informative post about the Third Circuit’s recent decision in Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. US Department of Health and Human Services, which I noted and discussed here. One thing that Kevin’s post makes me think is that given the nature of the legislative purpose for enacting RFRA, it is probable that the meaning of “exercise” was intended to be close to the constitutional meaning (pre-Smith). It would have been useful to have more statutory analysis of this type from the Third Circuit. From Kevin’s post:

Consider the facts of Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963), one of the two cases singled out in RFRA. The exercise of religion in that case was Adele Sherbert’s religion-based refusal to work on Saturday. See id. at 403 (describing the relevant conduct as “appellant’s conscientious objection to Saturday work”).

A corporation can engage in this kind of “exercise of religion” if a corporation can refuse, for religious reasons, to do something otherwise required by law. And it plainly can. Suppose a federal law requiring fast-food restaurants located near interstate highways to be open seven days a week. Chick-fil-A’s religion-based refusal to operate on Sundays in violation of this law would surely be an “exercise of religion” akin to Ms. Sherbert’s refusal to work on Saturdays.

The profit-making character of the corporation does not change the analysis of whether the corporation can make a religion-based decision. Chick-fil-A is a profit-making business. Yet it foregoes the profits it would otherwise make through Sunday operation because its religion-based corporate policy controls the manner in which it seeks to make a profit. Similarly, Ms. Sherbert was working for money (and later seeking unemployment benefits). Yet her religious obligation not to work on Saturday conditioned the manner in which she could go about earning money.

The panel majority opinion simply does not address this line of argument. One way in which its failure to address RFRA independently may have contributed to this failure to analyze what counts as a protected “exercise of religion” emerges from a word search for that phrase. It does not appear until page 28, after the majority has already concluded its Free Exercise analysis. In the course of its Free Exercise analysis, the Third Circuit panel majority does not ask whether a corporation can engage in the “exercise of religion” (RFRA’s words), but rather whether corporations can “engage in religious exercise” [11] or whether corporations can “exercise religion” [15]. The wording shift is subtle and almost certainly unintentional, but it nevertheless tends to lead analysis in the wrong direction. For the panel majority’s rephrasing suggests asking whether a corporation can engage in religious exercises like prayer, worship, participation in sacraments, and so on. But that is not what the governing law requires.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Baude on the Third Circuit’s Contraceptive Mandate Opinion

Will Baude has a strong post discussing the takeaway from the opinion of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit yesterday upholding the denial of a preliminary injunction in a contraceptives mandate case. In Conestoga Wood Specialties Corporation v. Department of HHS, a for-profit corporation sued the federal government to stop enforcement of the contraceptives mandate against it. The court, in a divided opinion, held that for-profit corporations cannot “exercise” religion and that they therefore can have no constitutional free exercise or RFRA claims.

Will asks some very good questions about the court’s analysis. I think he is right that the court proves far too much. All of the arguments it makes against the free exercise rights of corporations would apply equally to non-profit corporations like churches. Though the majority recognizes this problem, it does not discuss sufficiently (or really, at all) what for it are the key distinctions–the distinction between “for profit” and “nonprofit,” and the distinction between “religious” and “secular.” There may well be strong arguments to exclude corporations that fall on one side of these distinctions from the category of those entities that can “exercise” religion. But they do not appear in the majority’s opinion.

There is another odd portion of the majority’s opinion that Will does not discuss. Will’s post is largely focused on the Free Exercise Clause and the constitutional question. But there is a RFRA claim as well. As to that claim, the majority’s argument was surprisingly short:

Next, we consider Conestoga‘s RFRA claim. Under the RFRA, ―[g]overnment shall not substantially burden a person‘s exercise of religion even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability [unless the burden] (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.‖ 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000bb-1(a)-(b). As with the inquiry under the Free Exercise Clause, our preliminary inquiry is whether a for-profit, secular corporation can assert a claim under the RFRA. Under the plain language of the statute, the RFRA only applies to a ―person‘s exercise of religion.‖ Id. at § 2000bb-1(a).

Our conclusion that a for-profit, secular corporation cannot assert a claim under the Free Exercise Clause necessitates the conclusion that a for-profit, secular corporation cannot engage in the exercise of religion. Since Conestoga cannot exercise religion, it cannot assert a RFRA claim. We thus need not decide whether such a corporation is a “person” under the RFRA.

With respect, this is very strange. Normally, one does not simply assume that a term as used in the Constitution must mean exactly the same thing as a term used in a statute. That’s not a rule of statutory interpretation I ever heard of. Normally, one interprets the statutory language independently, using the accepted tools of statutory interpretation. It is true that one should avoid construing a statute in such a way that it violates the Constitution, but that canon does not apply here. It is perfectly possible that there may be different, and distinct, linguistic usages in a statute and in other legal texts. As an example, the majority’s own preferred approach to divining the meaning of “exercise” under the Free Exercise Clause is to engage in what it calls a “historical” analysis. But presumably to divine the meaning of the statutory language, one would begin with the “plain meaning” of the words in the statute as used today. The court uses the words “plain meaning” in the first paragraph, but it does not discuss the plain meaning of the words as used in the RFRA. Perhaps the usage is the same in the RFRA as in the Free Exercise; perhaps not. But simply to assume this about the meaning of the statute because one has decided on the constitutional question has got to be in error.

ADDENDUM: A recent prominent example of different constitutional and statutory meanings concerns the term “tax” as used in the Anti-Injunction Act and in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has held that “tax” in the AIA is to be understood in its broadest possible sense, but a different, and narrower, meaning has been said to apply to the term as used in the Constitution (see, e.g., the Child Labor Tax Case). The same thing might be true of the term “exercise.” See 42 USC s. 2000bb-2(4) (exercise of religion “includes any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief”) (emphasis added).

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Hobby Lobby Obtains Preliminary Injunction

The Becket Fund is reporting that the United States District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma has issued a preliminary injunction in the Hobby Lobby litigation against the enforcement of the federal government’s contraceptive mandate. The preliminary injunction follows after the Tenth Circuit’s recent decision in the litigation.

Posted on by Marc O. DeGirolami

Judge Duncan on the Influence of Customary Practice on Constitutional Interpretation

As has been widely reported, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit yesterday in a divided decision held that President Obama violated the Recess Appointments Clause of the Constitution in appointing three people to the National Labor Relations Board on January 4, 2012–that is, “intra-session,” during the Senate’s session beginning January 3, 2012. Judges Hamilton and Duncan held that “the Recess” in the Recess Appointments Clause of the Constitution (Article II, section 2, clause 3) means only the period between the two discrete sessions of the Senate, and that the President therefore may only use his powers under the Recess Appointments Clause inter-session. Judge Diaz dissented. The Fourth Circuit’s holding on this issue matches the holding of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in NLRB v. Noel Canning, which will be heard by the Supreme Court next term.

What does all of this have to do with law and religion? Well, not too much. But there is a very interesting set of observations in Judge Duncan’s brief concurring opinion which does make a connection (beginning at page 126). Here’s Judge Duncan:

Historical practice in the decades following ratification of the Constitution is similarly sparse, and too easily subject to manipulation by “savvy lawyers,” as the dissent rightly notes. Diss. Op. at 147. Nor is it obvious how the uptick in intrasession recess appointments since 1981 ought to affect our analysis. Compare Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 792 (1983) (upholding the practice of beginning legislative sessions with a prayer because its long history of use had made it “part of the fabric of our society”),with INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 944 (1983) (observing that the increased frequency of the Congressional veto in statutes “sharpened rather than blunted” the judicial inquiry).

The questions Judge Duncan is asking are extremely difficult in constitutional law, and they are lots of fun to pose to students: what is the strength of custom or practice in constitutional interpretation? Should a long-standing practice which the government has engaged in for many years render the practice more likely or less likely to be constitutional? Or should the customary nature of a practice have no effect on constitutionality at all?

What makes Judge Duncan’s choice of examples particularly neat is that the issue of the constitutionality of legislative prayer (as readers of the Forum will know) is also on the Court’s docket next term in Town of Greece v. Galloway. And yet another interesting feature of the juxtaposition of Marsh v. Chambers and INS v. Chadha–which seemingly take different views of the influence of custom on constitutional interpretation–is that Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote the majority opinion for the Court in both cases.

In December 2013, New York University Press will publish Religion Out Loud:Religion Out Loud Religious Sound, Public Space, and American Pluralism, by Isaac Weiner (Georgia State University).  The publisher’s description follows:

For six months in 2004, controversy raged in Hamtramck, Michigan, as residents debated a proposed amendment that would exempt the adhan, or Islamic call to prayer from the city’s anti-noise ordinance.  The call to prayer functioned as a flashpoint in disputes about the integration of Muslims into this historically Polish-Catholic community.  No one openly contested Muslim’s right to worship in their mosques, but many neighbors framed their resistance around what they regarded as the inappropriate public pronouncement of Islamic presence, an announcement that audibly intruded upon their public space.  Throughout U.S. history, complaints about religion as noise have proven useful both for restraining religious dissent and for circumscribing religion’s boundaries more generally.  At the same time, religious individuals and groups rarely have kept quiet.  They have insisted on their right to practice religion out loud, implicitly advancing alternative understandings of religion and its place in the modern world.  In Religion Out Loud, Isaac Weiner takes such sonic dispute seriously.  Weaving the story of religious “noise” though multiple historical eras and diverse religious communities he convincingly demonstrates that religious pluralism has never been solely a matter of competing values, truth claims, or moral doctrines, but of different styles of pubic practice, of fundamentally different ways of using body and space- and that these differences ultimately have expressed very different conceptions of religion itself.