Sen. Orrin Hatch has been a great proponent of religious freedom, leading the sponsorship of statutes like RFRA and RLUIPA. He just gave the keynote address at the annual symposium of BYU's international law and religion center, where he spoke about both the achievement of religious liberty in America and the sobering, multiplying challenges to it.
I'm gratified that he started off with a quote from me that "one of America’s greatest contributions to the world"--one that must be preserved and strengthened--"has been establishing religious freedom as both social reality and constitutional principle." He goes on:
Nor is religious freedom a uniquely American ideal. In 1948, after the horror of World War II, numerous nations, including the United States, signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 18 of that Declaration states that every person has a fundamental right to freedom of religion, including “freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
Here again we see the three dimensions of truly robust religious freedom: belief and behavior, private and public, individual and collective. Genuine religious freedom exists when these three dimensions are both social reality and constitutional principle, and are understood as fundamental.
Then he talks about the threats to religious liberty today--many of us know them well, but it's a useful summary. And he ends with some thoughts on how "to strengthen religious freedom as both social reality and constitutional principle," like:
Sixth, we must affirm our own individual faith and devotion. As community leaders, we have the ability to reach and influence broad audiences. By publicly affirming our faith, we both show that faith does have a place in the public sphere, and show community members that their leaders place a priority on religion. This does not mean we should become public pastors. But it does mean we should not be shy about our own beliefs. By demonstrating that religion is important to our own self-identity and desire to serve, we show our community members that religion is a thing of value and source of motivation.
And who knows? Showing others how religion has changed our lives may spark a desire in them to seek greater devotion in their own lives. There can be no greater protector of religious liberty than a society composed of individuals who actually value religion.
Right. Religious liberty protects the ability to have a vibrant, outward-looking, growing faith, but it works the other way too: as John Garvey, Steve Smith, and others have emphasized, religious liberty will be protected if (and only if) there are lots of believers and they can't be ignored. It's also crucial (and I know Sen. Harch would agree) that the manner of doing so be humble and service-oriented, never about the religious believer's "prerogatives."
Friday, October 3, 2014
Interesting story, ending with this thought:
“You can serve God everywhere, no matter what profession or job you have,” [Sister Doris] says. “As Saint Benedict wrote, ‘in all things God may be glorified,’ and that is also true of beer.”
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
I did an online interview for Millennial, a popular blog by and for young Catholics, about the current pregnancy discrimination case, Young v. UPS, and the amicus brief filed by 23 pro-life organizations. I won't quote myself at length here in a teaser--but I do emphasize that the brief makes "a strong statement: pro-life groups believe that supporting pregnant women (including through effectively enforcing non-discrimination laws) is fundamentally pro-life."
Sunday, September 28, 2014
An interesting article in The Week on the subject of pregnancy discrimination, headlined as "The feminist issue that too many women ignore." The articles makes reference to the briefs by both pro-life and pro-choice groups supporting Peggy Young, the plaintiff in the SCT in Young v. United Parcel Service. It quotes the pro-life brief and then adds (speaking presumably about potential legislative efforts down the line, beyond the SCT case):
While some feminists will surely resist working too closely with those who oppose abortion, others might view this as an opportunity to step outside their circles and increase the likelihood of making positive change. As writer and critic Judith Shulevitz puts it in her recent examination of the state of feminism today, getting legislation passed that will help working mothers will require "being willing to make compromises and unlikely alliances to get the necessary votes." By "unlikely" she means those who "fall afoul of Emily's List."
(Cross-posted at Whole Life Democrat)
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
The Supreme Court this term is hearing Reed v. Town of Gilbert, a church's challenge to a town ordinance that imposes widely varying size and duration requirements on temporary signs with different messages and subject matters. "Political signs" (those supporting candidates or ballot measures) and "ideological signs" (those that simply communicate a noncommercial message) can be much larger and stay up much longer than "temporary directional signs for qualifying events," which announce an event (other than a political one!) and give directions to it. Officials classified Good News Church's signs for its weekly Sunday worship services (held in rented public-school rooms) into this last category. The signs thus could not be placed until 12 hours before the services and had to be removed within one hour afterward.
The UST Law Religious Liberty Appellate Clinic, which I direct, wrote an amicus brief for the Christian Legal Society and several other groups supporting the church's challenge. We argue that the sign ordinance is content-based (discriminating based on the subject matter of the signs) and thus subject to strict scrutiny; we support the plaintiffs' argument that the content-discrimination category applies here even if the town was not shown to be motivated by disagreement with the message of disfavored signs.
We also argue that the disfavored treatment of signs that announce and give information about a noncommercial event conflicts not only with freedom of speech, but with the distinct First Amendment right of freedom of assembly. This may call to mind for readers John Inazu's important recent book, Liberty's Refuge: The Forgotten Freedom of Assembly, and we rely significantly on the book in this section. We think that the denigration of the value of event announcements in this ordinance really frames nicely John's point that assembly should not be reduced merely to speech (or the other doctrine, lacking an explicit textual pedigree, of "intimate or expressive association"). Here's a bit from that section of the brief:
The Court of Appeals’ holding that speech announcing events has little or no constitutional protection is gravely detrimental to the distinct First Amendment right of freedom of assembly. Because the people have the right not just to speak, but “peaceably to assemble,” U.S. Const. amend. I, messages announcing events and directing people to them cannot be relegated to inferior constitutional status. Substantial restrictions on meeting announcements and directions can severely hamper the practical ability of groups to assemble...
This Court has made clear that the “right of peaceable assembly is a right cognate to those of free speech and free press and is equally fundamental.” De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 364 (1937).... Accordingly, the interpretation of free speech principles must give weight to the distinct but related right of assembly.
The press release from CLS is here. Thanks to clinic student (3L) Michael Blissenbach, who did a fine job in contributing to the drafting of the brief. And of course thanks to Kim Colby of CLS, who as many readers may know is one of the nation's very best religious liberty lawyers.
Saturday, September 20, 2014
The Economist's Democracy in America column notes the Supreme Court brief from 23 pro-life organizations (my previous post is here) supporting pregnancy-discrimination plaintiffs:
ACTIVISTS on warring sides of the abortion debate rarely take the same position when it comes to Supreme Court cases involving women’s rights. But pro-choicers and pro-lifers have found common cause in Young v United Parcel Service, a pregnancy discrimination case the justices will take up on December 3rd. . . .
For the liberal women’s rights organisations, the question is one of gender equality. Workers like Ms Young, they say, have a legal right to the same kinds of accommodations that companies offer to employees unaffected by a pregnancy. For pro-life groups, there is an added dimension: women facing inflexible bosses tend to consider abortion. The amicus brief from 23 pro-life organisations quotes Senator Harrison Williams, an architect of the PDA who died in 2001. “One of our basic purposes in introducing this bill,” he had said, “is to prevent the tragedy of needless, and unwanted abortions forced upon a woman because she cannot afford to leave her job without pay to carry out the full term of her pregnancy.”
