"The Persecution of Belmont Abbey"

Charlotte Allen is on the case, in The Weekly Standard.  (For another MOJ treatment of this case, go here.)

The implications for religious liberty in the EEOC's newly-arrived-at decision to ignore the good-faith beliefs of a religious institution closely affiliated with a religious order (Benedictines still do much of the teaching at Belmont Abbey) are obvious. "This is the first time that an unelected bureaucrat has expounded a novel -theory of law in this fashion and applied it to a 150-year-old small religious college in North Carolina," Eric Kniffin, legal counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which has taken on Belmont Abbey's case, told me in a telephone interview. Right now the college has the option of trying to arrive at a mutually satisfactory "conciliation" with the EEOC and, if those efforts fail, bringing a lawsuit against the commission. Neither Belmont Abbey nor the EEOC will discuss the current status of, or provide further details about, what sort of negotiations might be taking place. . . .

I am proud to say that Eric Kniffin is a graduate of Notre Dame Law School.  Go, Becket, go!