Law Commons^™

During the Clinton Administration, the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") and the Department of Justice ("DOJ") broke new ground in the enforcement of the tax code's ban on "partisan political activity" by tax-exempt religious organizations. President Clinton, meanwhile, used church buildings and religious services for political campaigning and made political speeches on behalf of candidates that intertwined the political and the religious. Thus, while the Clinton Administration clarified the role of religious exercise and expression in some areas of public life, like public schools and the federal workplace, Administration activities clouded the role religion is to play in political campaigns.

The …

Using the controversial 1987 case between Georgetown University and a gay and lesbian student organization as a backdrop, this article analyzes the free exercise rights of religiously-affiliated colleges and universities and their ability to discriminate against gay and lesbian student groups. The article tracks the jurisprudential development of free exercise challenges and details why current United States Supreme Court precedent provides little protection for such colleges and universities. Given the weakened state of free exercise rights, this article examines what rights and protections, if any, gays and lesbians have under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause and local and state …