The always insightful and eloquent defender of pro-life feminism, Erika Bachiochi, hits it out of the ballpark again today in an op-ed on the CNN website.
Thursday, January 22, 2015
Good Reading for Jan. 22
TBT: When the March for Life made the U.S. Reports
Today's March for Life seems as good an occasion as any to share this portion of Justice Scalia's dissent in Planned Parenthood of S.E. Pa. v. Casey blasting the plurality's assertion that the Court needed to be even more unwilling than normal to reconsider precedent when that precedent has been the object of intense national controversy:
[T]he notion that we would decide a case differently from the way we otherwise would have in order to show that we can stand firm against public disapproval is frightening. It is a bad enough idea, even in the head of someone like me, who believes that the text of the Constitution, and our traditions, say what they say and there is no fiddling with them. But when it is in the mind of a Court that believes the Constitution has an evolving meaning, see ante, at 6; that the Ninth Amendment's reference to "othe[r]" rights is not a disclaimer, but a charter for action, ibid.; and that the function of this Court is to "speak before all others for [the people's] constitutional ideals" unrestrained by meaningful text or tradition--then the notion that the Court must adhere to a decision for as long as the decision faces "great opposition" and the Court is "under fire" acquires a character of almost czarist arrogance. We are offended by these marchers who descend upon us, every year on the anniversary of Roe, to protest our saying that the Constitution requires what our society has never thought the Constitution requires. These people who refuse to be "tested by following" must be taught a lesson. We have no Cossacks, but at least we can stubbornly refuse to abandon an erroneous opinion that we might otherwise change--to show how little they intimidate us.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Did Justice Ginsburg endorse the Establishment Clause third-party burdens argument in Holt v. Hobbs?
I agree with Rick and Marc in rejecting the existence of a general rule that the Establishment Clause prohibits RFRA- or RLUIPA-required accommodations that impose third-party burdens (or allegedly impose such burdens, depending on one's understanding of the benefit/burden baseline). In my view, the Hobby Lobby amici curiae brief by Nathan Chapman lays out a better reading of the governing law than that adopted by the scholars linked in Rick's post. Unlike Rick and Marc, however, I do not read Justice Ginsburg's Holt concurrence as endorsing an Establishment Clause-based limit on third-party accommodations that should otherwise properly be recognized under RLUIPA and RFRA.
To assess this disagreement, one needs to follow Justice Ginsburg's Holt citations to her Hobby Lobby dissent: "See [Hobby Lobby], at ___, ___–___, and n. 8, ___ (slip op., at 2, 7–8, and n. 8, 27) (GINSBURG, J., dissenting)." {BTW, gotta love these Supreme Court citation conventions! See ___ (gratuitous personal op. at _:);)_).}
Justice Ginsburg's position in the cited portions of her Hobby Lobby dissent is that consideration of third-party burdens is part of the appropriate application of RFRA and RLUIPA. She does not adopt the view that these burdens could give rise to a freestanding Establishment Clause limitation on what would otherwise be required by those statutes. True, the Holt-cited portions of Justice Ginsburg's Hobby Lobby dissent do rely on Cutter v. Wilkinson and Estate of Thornton v. Caldor, which are Establishment Clause cases. But they also rely on Wisconsin v. Yoder and Prince v. Massachusetts, which are not.
Footnote 25 of Justice Ginsburg's Hobby Lobby dissent (not cited in her Holt v. Hobbs concurrence) most directly addresses the influence of the Establishment Clause on RFRA/RLUIPA analysis. It opens with the statement: "As the Court made clear in Cutter, the government's license to grant religion-based exemptions from generally applicable laws is constrained by the Establishment Clause." But the closing sentence relies on United States v. Lee, which was neither a third-party burden case nor an Establishment Clause case: "[O]ne person's right to free exercise must be kept in harmony with the rights of her fellow citizens, and 'some religious practices [must] yield to the common good.' United States v. Lee, 455 U.S. 252, 259, 102 S.Ct. 1051, 71 L.Ed.2d 127 (1982)." This is consistent with the position set forth in the Chapman brief, which is that Cutter interprets RLUIPA (and RFRA, by extension) to incorporate consideration of third-party burdens into the application of the statutorily required strict scrutiny.
If this reading of Justice Ginsburg's opinion is correct, then Justice Ginsburg actually agrees both with Rick that "the question whether a proposed accommodation is too costly is one that RFRA and RLUIPA call to be answered through the statutorily prescribed balancing inquiry, and not through an additional, accommodation-skeptical Establishment Clause inquiry," and also with Marc, that "the strict scrutiny standard of RLUIPA and RFRA, if 'properly appl[ied],' itself incorporates the Establishment Clause limits raised by cases like Thornton."
What Does It Mean to Say that a Religious Accommodation Should Not "Detrimentally Affect Others"? And a Couple of Other Holt v. Hobbs Thoughts
Not too much to add to Rick's analysis of Holt v. Hobbs. A short and precise opinion from Justice Alito. Here are just a few other questions and comments about the opinion and concurrences:
1. Rick quotes Justice Ginsburg's one-paragraph concurrence, which states that she only joins the Court's opinion "on th[e] understanding" that the accommodation here "would not detrimentally affect others who do not share petitioner's belief." I guess she felt she had to use the occasion to say something pejorative about Hobby Lobby, which she also quotes. It seems she has bought the line pressed by those who claim that the Establishment Clause prohibits third-party burdens, yet she articulates the standard that they champion rather expansively. There may be a big difference between arguing that the Establishment Clause prohibits religious accommodations that impose "significant burdens on identifiable third parties" (if memory serves, this was the standard favored by academic defenders of this argument) and arguing that the Establishment Clause prohibits religious accommodations that "detrimentally affect" anybody who doesn't share the claimant's religious beliefs. I don't believe the former is a correct reading of the Establishment Clause. But the latter formulation seems a good deal broader. What constitutes a "detrimental effect" under that approach? Might symbolic harms count? I don't see why they wouldn't. And as Justice Alito points out, Arkansas made no argument that an exemption was not feasible as a matter of cost or other resources ("the Department has not argued that denying a petitioner an exemption is necessary to further a compelling interest in cost control or program administration"). Had the Department made an argument about cost control (with evidence, which was seemingly in short supply on its side), would any evidence of increased cost (no matter how small) not only been enough to find against the claimant as a RLUIPA matter, but actually have triggered an Establishment Clause violation had the prison accommodated the inmate? Suppose I am a prison inmate who thinks 1/2 inch beards are beautiful as a fashion statement, or because I come from a long line of bearded ancestors and it is important to me to observe the tradition (not so far from the truth in my case, other than the bit about being a prison inmate). Am I not "detrimentally affected" by the inequality of treatment that results from Holt's accommodation, but not mine? Surely I am. It seems to me that this sort of standard, as well as its more careful academic progenitor, strikes at the heart of these religious accommodation statutes.
2. Following from that point, the heart of these statutes (as Rick also notes) is to provide "very broad protection for religious liberty" or "expansive protection for religious liberty," as the Court says right at the start of the opinion. This case was an easy one according to that standard, even with a thumb on the scale of deference toward prison administrators, which the Court reaffirms (it rejects "unquestioning deference" but it acknowledges the "respect" that is due the prison administrators' "expertise"). Should not Hobby Lobby, in which there was no such presumptive deference or "respect" accorded to the government, also have been an easy case according to that standard? Should it at least have been as easy, in light of the absence of deference toward the government in the latter? And yet Holt was unanimous while Hobby Lobby split 5-4.
3. The breadth of protection for religious freedom contemplated by the statutes (RFRA and RLUIPA) and affirmed by the Court was notable, but so was the rigor with which the least restrictive means portion of the analysis was applied. In Holt, the prison argued that its concerns about the shaving of facial hair and escape were unique because of the particular sort of prison it operated, and that its rule was therefore the least restrictive means of securing against the possibility of escape. But the Court rejected that argument for the simple reason that the prison had not done enough to distinguish itself from other prisons that allow facial hair and that had managed these concerns. Other prisons, that is, whose situation was analogous to the Arkansas prison (even if not identical) used less restrictive means to achieve their security interests. The Court looked to the variety of less restrictive means on offer out there in the national universe, and found that the Department should have used one or more of those. This is perhaps a useful elaboration of the least restrictive means test. Unless the government can prove that its burden is truly unique, the Court will look to analogous (even if not identical) solutions to similar problems reached by other governmental entities. If those other solutions seem to have worked without an imposition on religious freedom, then the government has not used the least restrictive means.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Some thoughts on Holt v. Hobbs
While waiting for what I am sure will be Marc's more thoughtful and insightful comments about today's welcome, clear, and correct decision in Hobbs, I've gathered a few of my own:
First, the opinion by Justice Alito is exceptionally well crafted. It should win a Green Bag award or something. It covers the necessary bases, and no more. The language is clear and functional. (It reveals no idiosyncratic aversion to adverbs and includes no cringe-inducing attempts at grandeur.) One knows, at every point in the analysis, where one is.
Second, Justice Alito confirmed (as he had in Hobby Lobby) that RLUIPA (and RFRA) should not be read narrowly so as to provide no more protection than did some of the Court's earlier First Amendment cases. Here, he rejected the notion that "the availability of alternative means of practicing religion is a relevant consideration" for purposes of deciding whether RLUIPA's protections are triggered.
Third, Justice Alito reminded readers that "RLUIPA . . . applies to an exercise of religion regardless of whether it is 'compelled'" by the claimant's religious beliefs or traditions. Fourth, and related, the lead opinion insists that "the protection of RLUIPA, no less than the guarantee of the Free Exercise Clause, is 'not limited to beliefs which are shared by all of the members of a religious sect.'" So, it would not be relevant to the "substantial burden" inquiry under RLUIPA if not all Muslims believe men must grow beards.
These last three points, together, are very helpful, I think, in helping us think more clearly about the idea of "substantial burdens" in the accommodation-of-religion context. What it is that we are asking about when we ask about "substantiality" is not the power or weight of the belief, or its centrality, or its orthodoxy, or its plausibility. We are asking, instead, about the nature of the government's imposition on the sincerely asserted belief. There is no question, for example, that a Roman Catholic's obligation to worthily receive the Eucharist at least once a year is an important one, but a neutral and generally applicable law that, in application, (somehow) increased the cost to Catholics by $.01 would not impose a "substantial" burden on religious exercise. Here, in Holt, the question is whether the penalty imposed or threatened by the government is substantial. And, it is.
Next, the Court was appropriately underwhelmed by the invocation - in broad and general terms -- of a "compelling interest" in prison security and safety. Rather, "RLUIPA, like RFRA, contemplates a 'more focused' inquiry and 'requires the Government to demonstrate that the compelling interest test is satisfied through application of the challenged law 'to the person'––the particular claimant whose sincere exercise of religion is being substantially burdened." And, relatedly, the Court meaningfully -- while giving appropriate consideration to the prison context -- engaged the question whether applying the prison-grooming rule to the claimant, without exception, was the least-restrictive means of accomplishing the government's important goals.
In a separate opinion, Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor clarified (and perhaps qualified) their agreement with the lead opinion. They wrote:
Unlike the exemption this Court approved in Burwell v.
Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U. S. ___ (2014), accommodating
petitioner’s religious belief in this case would not
detrimentally affect others who do not share petitioner’s
belief. See id., at ___, ___–___, and n. 8, ___ (slip op., at 2,
7–8, and n. 8, 27) (GINSBURG, J., dissenting). On that
understanding, I join the Court’s opinion.
While I understand why Justice Alito (and others who joined his opinion) would not think it necessary to respond to this statement, I wish one of the Justices had. The claim that it violates the Establishment Clause to accommodate religion in ways that impose any costs or burdens on third parties is one that, of course, is made and believed by a number of very smart people, but I do not think it is correct. The Court has not clearly established such a general rule; that is, the precedents and quotes that are invoked in support of this claim do not, in my judgment, clearly support such a rule. As I see it (see more here), the question whether a proposed accommodation is too costly is one that RFRA and RLUIPA call to be answered through the statutorily prescribed balancing inquiry, and not through an additional, accommodation-skeptical Establishment Clause inquiry.
Finally: today's opinion offers a very, very welcome counter to the unfair and mean-spirited notion -- one that is, I'm afraid, getting a lot of purchase in some quarters -- that concerns about "religious liberty" are "dog whistles" or "fig leaves" for "bigotry", and so can be dismissed as such. Some invocations of "religious liberty," and some demands for accommodation, have been, are, and will be insincere, or morally offensive, or simply ungrantable. Many others will not. We should take the time to distinguish -- carefully, thoughtfully, reasonably sympathetically -- between the two.
And . . . congratulations to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and to Prof. Doug Laycock.
Another Unanimous Roberts Court Law and Religion Opinion
The Supreme Court today handed down Holt v. Hobbs, the RLUIPA case involving an Arkansas prisoner who complained of a state prison policy disallowing him to grow a beard in accordance with his understanding of his religious obligations.
The opinion was unanimous, with two separate, short concurrences by Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor. I'll save analysis for a later moment (it was a rather straightforward application of RLUIPA in Justice Alito's majority opinion, though with some interesting language about the individual components of the test).
For now, though, I'll just note the fact of another unanimous opinion in this area from the Roberts Court. Holt v. Hobbs continues to follow the Roberts Court pattern of either unanimity or 5-4 outcomes in law and religion jurisprudence, as I discuss in greater detail at Part II of this article. The figures are now four unanimous law and religion decisions as against six 5-4 law and religion decisions. The article speculates about a few reasons that we might be seeing this particular voting pattern, contrasting it with the patterns of Supreme Courts past.
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Justice Rehnquist, Religious Freedom, and the Constitution
I've posted on SSRN a paper of mine called "Chief Justice Rehnquist, Religious Freedom, and the Constitution." I wrote it a few years ago, but it's now going to be published in a forthcoming West Academic Press volume called The Constitutional Legacy of William H. Rehnquist. And, I'll be presenting a version of it in a few weeks at a conference ("The Rehnquist Court: Ten Years Later") at the University of Arizona dedicated to the work and memory of the late Chief. Here's the abstract:
It might not have been foreseen that William Rehnquist would have a marked influence on the Supreme Court’s interpretation, construction, and application of the First Amendment’s Religion Clauses. And yet, he certainly did. Kent Greenawalt wrote that Rehnquist – or, more precisely, the “Rehnquist Court” – “turned the constitutional law of religion upside down.” “[W]e have moved,” he reported, “from expansive readings of both of the religion clauses to narrow readings of the Free Exercise Clause and of very important aspects of the Establishment Clause.” It is suggested in this paper that in facilitating and guiding the “move[s]” identified by Greenawalt, Rehnquist for the most part “turned the constitutional law of religion” right-side up, rather than “upside down.” He left the Court’s Religion Clauses doctrine better than it was before, that is, better rooted in the Constitution’s text, history, structure, and values than it was when he joined the Court. In any event, that the “move[s]” happened, and that they happened in no small part because of him, seems beyond dispute.
Rehnquist was able, for the most part, to exercise both judicial humility in the face of politically accountable actors’ attempts to deal with debatable questions of policy and morality – including most of the questions that arise in free-exercise and non-establishment cases – and careful review of measures and actions that might compromise the structural integrity of our Constitution. This paper’s appreciative review of his contributions to the Court’s Religion Clauses doctrine will, it is hoped, serve as a reminder that cases involving tension or collision between political and religious authority implicate the “first principles” of our constitutional experiment no less than those involving federal interference with the states’ appropriate functions or regulatory overreach by Congress.
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Lash Reviews American Sniper--"A Deeply Subversive War Movie"
I am posting, with permission, Professor Kurt Lash's superb review of the movie, "American Sniper." I haven't seen it, but after Kurt's very interesting comments, I want to.
___________________________
A Review of American Sniper
Director: Clint Eastwood
This is a deeply subversive war movie. On its face, it appears to be a straightforward retelling of the life of a soldier in war. It’s a well-trodden script: The training, the first kill, the fearful family at home, the growing emotional disconnect between soldier and loved ones as the bloody and tragic experience of war takes it toll, the increasing difficulty of leaving the war behind. This has all been done before. True, director Eastwood has an especially skilled hand. He takes us into the experience of training and battle in a manner that is realistic and which avoids the self-indulgent errors of prior films: Yes, training is grueling, but it is not sadistic. Yes battle is jarring and horrific, but also dusty and boring. Yes some soldiers think the effort is pointless, but others believe the effort is profoundly important.
Unlike most war films, however, Eastwood take no position on war itself. This is not an Army (Navy, in this case) recruiting film, nor an anti-war “bring the troops home” film. Eastwood also avoids making any kind of political statement about the Iraq war. No doubt, some will perceive a political statement precisely because there is nothing anti-Bush or anti-Iraq about the film. But that’s merely a reflection of our poisonous political culture.
In some ways, American Sniper follows the path explored with such moving success in Band of Brothers: Soldiers are not psychopaths. They are ordinary men asked to perform extraordinary tasks. The crucible of battle melds men together into a profoundly protective “family.” They experience brotherhood and loss on a level difficult for any non-soldier to imagine. When Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote of his early experience fighting in the Civil War “in our youths, our hearts were touched with fire,” he may have intended it as a boast, but it can just as easily be understood as lament. The act of destroying human beings, however justified, leaves a scar on one’s soul.
But where Band of Brothers presented the humanity of the ordinary soldier, Eastwood presents the humanity of the outstanding soldier. This is territory not even Band of Brothers was willing to explore. Instead, Steven Ambrose and the script-writers for Band portray the most effective killing machine in the 101st, Ronald Speirs, as something of a psychopath. Rumored to have mass murdered prisoners of war, Band’s writers have Speirs instruct a frightened soldier “the only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier's supposed to function. Without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends on it.” This statement, of course, encapsulates the Hollywood version of the truly effective soldier since the time of Apocalypse Now. Soldiers are “baby killers,” we’ve been told. It is inhuman work. To be good at it means you are inhuman yourself, you have abandoned your humanity, or you are doomed to insanity and suicide. Thus, the Deer Hunter, Coming Home, Patton, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, etc etc.
It is here that Eastwood’s realistic but almost oddly subdued portrayal of Chris Kyle earns its title as a subversive war movie. Kyle was, in fact, an astonishingly effective killer. He was also a heroically committed soldier, serving four tours of duty in Iraq. I won’t recount all his stats and medals. Let’s just stipulate that Kyle did what soldiers do and did it as well as or better than any soldier in history. And, like prior Hollywood “killing machines,” Kyle is deeply patriotic and hasn’t the slightest doubt about the justness of his work. But jarringly unlike prior Hollywood warriors, Eastwood leaves open the distinct possibility that Kyle was right. There is nothing implausible about Kyle’s explanation about why his work is both important and just, and there is nothing in the movie to suggest that Kyle was anything but a decent human being, both in and out of war. Eastwood does not avoid portraying the inevitable psychological toll of war. Indeed, the toll is a major aspect of the film. But this is not the portrayal of a psychopath or a destroyed human soul. It is the story of a soldier who manages to maintain his humanity despite his commitment and skill at destroying other human beings.
How Kyle remains “human” is, of course, the key to understanding this movie. At key moments, Kyle interacts with other soldiers who either lose their belief in their work, or never had that belief in the first place. Such doubts cripple the soldier's mind and their skill. Kyle survives, and survives as an intact soul, Eastwood implies, because he never doubted the moral justness of his work. As we follow Kyle through the horrors of war, we are constantly shown examples of how one can be heroically committed to humanity, not only despite being an effective soldier, but through being an effective soldier.
Even more jarring (from a certain perspective), Eastwood’s movie is not about “the brotherhood of all soldiers.” It is about American soldiers. There are good guys and bad guys in this movie, and Eastwood leaves no doubt about who is who. In what has to be the most subversive move of all, the movie’s title, American Sniper, seems not the least bit ironic.
In truth, I would not have chosen American Sniper as a finalist for best picture. Eastwood’s pacing and the structure of the film results in a subdued experience that I am not sure sufficiently does justice to the man or the material. Perhaps that was Eastwood’s intention, perhaps this was never meant to be a blockbuster (Eastwood is long past needing any such validation), but instead a homage to the troops and their families. It certainly comes across that way: The silent credits of the movie mirrored the deep and respectful silence of the audience as we stood and exited the movie.
On the other hand, I cannot help but think Eastwood was speaking to all of us, not just soldiers and their families. It’s a worthy effort, even if not wholly successful. See it for Bradley Cooper’s outstanding effort (he fully deserves his nomination), and struggle with its protagonist to reconcile the good warrior with the good man.
Friday, January 16, 2015
An interview with Prof. Steven Smith
Here is an interesting interview with Prof. Steven Smith (San Diego) -- in my view, one of the most important and insightful law-and-religion scholars working -- about his new book and about the "fate of American religious liberty." (Especially as it becomes increasingly common for people to tendentiously dismiss concerns about religious liberty as "bigotry" or "dog whistles.") Here's a bit:
In Rise and Decline I suggest that our contemporary approach to religious pluralism might accurately be characterized as one of denial (or self-deception). We intone, over and over again, that government must be “neutral” toward all religions. And then we desperately try to ignore or obfuscate the fact that in cases of genuine conflict, there simply is no meaningfully neutral position. In this vein, a pervasive strategy is to criticize your opponent’s position for departing from neutrality (as it will, inevitably) while distracting attention (other people’s and your own) away from the fact that your own position is equally a departure from neutrality. There are various techniques for accomplishing this. But the language of “imposing values on others” is one very common (and often rhetorically effective) way of practicing this sort of deception or self-deception.
Hanby, Weigel, and Dreher on "The Civic Project of American Christianity"
The exchange among Michael Hanby, George Weigel, and Rod Dreher, over at First Things, is very much worth a read. Hanby, in "The Civic Project of American Christianity", takes stock of our times, and writes:
"[A] revolution in fundamental anthropology will invariably transform the meaning and content of justice and bring about its own morality. We are beginning to feel the force of this transformation in civil society and the political order. Court decisions invalidating traditional marriage law fall from the sky like rain. The regulatory state and ubiquitous new global media throw their ever increasing weight behind the new understanding of marriage and its implicit anthropology, which treats our bodies as raw material to be used as we see fit. Today a rigorous new public morality inverts and supplants the residuum of our Christian moral inheritance.
This compels us to reconsider the civic project of American Christianity that has for the most part guided our participation in the liberal public order for at least a century. . . .
George Weigel (among other things) advises -- and makes a point that I think cannot be made often enough to those of us who aspire to some kind of constructive engagement with and expression about the whole "faith, culture, and public life" cluster of matters:
In a culture that has lost contact with reality, a Church in America equipping its people to be the missionary disciples they were baptized to be (a vocation that includes responsible citizenship) must, in its preaching and catechesis, help its people reestablish that contact. In circumstances as philosophically impoverished as ours, appeals to “metaphysics” and “anthropology” are likely to fail, save with a very small remnant. Similarly, attempts to fight the new Gnosticism with the weapons of logic deployed in service to moral truth are almost certainly doomed to be frustrated, because public life is not, in the final analysis, an exercise in logic alone. But offering the people of the Church a new way to see Things As They Are by looking at the world through the lens of biblical faith might offer a way forward. N. T. Wright puts what I’m trying to say succinctly when he argues that the entire burden of the Pauline letters is to teach new Christians to “think within the biblical narrative, to see themselves as actors within the ongoing scriptural drama: to allow their erstwhile pagan thought-forms to be transformed by a biblically based renewal of the mind” (emphasis added).
Dreher is (even) more pessimistic (or, as he says, "realistic"):
If by “Christianity” we mean the philosophical and cultural framework setting the broad terms for engagement in American public life, Christianity is dead, and we Christians have killed it. We have allowed our children to be catechized by the culture and have produced an anesthetizing religion suited for little more than being a chaplaincy to the liberal individualistic order. . . .
The civic project of American Christianity has come to an end, for how can we produce Christian civic life when we are not producing authentic Christians?
This is not to endorse quietism. I don’t think we can afford to be disengaged from public and political life. But it is to advocate for a realistic understanding of where we stand as Christians in twenty-first-century America. Our prospects for living and acting in the public square as Christians are now quite limited.
Put bluntly, given the dynamics of our rapidly changing culture, I believe it will be increasingly difficult to be a good Christian and a good American. It is far more important to me to preserve the faith than to preserve liberal democracy and the American order. Ideally, there should not be a contradiction, but again, the realities of post-Christian America challenge our outdated ideals.
Read it all. Think about it. Thoughts?