Law Commons^™

The Role Of Religion In State Public Accommodations Laws, Elizabeth Sepper

Saint Louis University Law Journal

In this Article, I provide a comprehensive account of the role of religion in public accommodations laws. I analyze public accommodations statutes across the fifty states, identify their boundaries, and categorize their religious exemptions. In so doing, I interrogate and debunk misconceptions widely held even by legal scholars that: the Civil Rights Act is a representative public accommodations law; antidiscrimination obligations of retail establishments and social service providers are unusual or new; exemptions for religious entities or small businesses are common; and public accommodations laws have as their central aim remedying market exclusion.

Part I sets out the basic framework …