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What Impact The Supreme Court’S Recent Hobby Lobby Decision Might Have For Lgbt Civil Rights?, Vincent Samar

Vincent Samar

Abstract

What Impact the Supreme Court’s Recent Hobby Lobby

Decision Might Have for LGBT Civil Rights?

Vincent J. Samar

The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Hobby Lobby case has created shockwaves of concern among civil rights groups questioning whether for-profit corporations can assert a religious exemption from civil rights legislation under a 1993 federal law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The matter is of particular concern in the LGBT community given the possible impact it could have on services traditionally offered to those getting married as more and more states legalize same-sex marriage. Though the Court’s conservative majority …

Religion As A Legal Proxy, Micah Schwartzman

San Diego Law Review

In what follows, after briefly summarizing Koppelman’s position, I argue that his view is vulnerable to the charge that using religion as a legal proxy is unfair to those with comparable, but otherwise secular, ethical and moral convictions. Koppelman has, of course, anticipated this objection, but his responses are either ambivalent or insufficient to overcome it. The case for adopting religion as a proxy turns partly on arguments against other potential candidates. In particular, Koppelman rejects the freedom of conscience as a possible substitute. But even if he is right that its coverage is not fully extensive with the category …

When Free Exercise Is A Burden: Protecting "Third Parties" In Religious Accommodation Law, Kara Loewentheil

Kara Loewentheil

During the 2014 U.S. Supreme Court term, the Court considered two challenges to the contraceptive coverage requirement of the Affordable Care Act. These cases attracted enormous attention, and brought a new urgency to the principle that requests for religious accommodations should be weighed against any burdens such accommodations would impose on “third parties,” who are more accurately termed “existing rights-holders.” However, neither courts nor scholars have provided a consistent or principled way of thinking through how to evaluate such burdens and how to weigh them against free exercise rights. This Article takes up that challenge, using the example of the …