Digital Commons Network^™

The Constitutionality Of The Title Ix Religious Exemption, Madelyn Jacobsen, Rebecca Batty, Editor

Brigham Young University Prelaw Review

Petitioners in Hunter v. Department of Education questioned the constitutionality of the Title IX religious exemption as the basis of their 2021 class-action lawsuit. They claimed that more than 30 religious schools maintained discriminatory policies against LGBTQ students under the exemption. The religious exemption, often painted as unconstitutional discrimination, permits religious schools' adherence to sincerely held religious beliefs—and promotes a distinctive religious education that secular schools lack. This paper examines legal precedents relevant to religious freedom, higher education, and discrimination that demand the Title IX religious exemption remains in effect.

Covid-19, Churches, And Culture Wars, John D. Inazu

Scholarship@WashULaw

The First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause often requires courts to balance competing interests of the highest order. On the one hand, the Constitution recognizes the free exercise of religion as a fundamental right. On the other hand, the government sometimes has compelling reasons for limiting free exercise, especially in situations involving dangers to health and safety. The shutdown and social distancing orders issued during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic not only restricted free exercise but also limited what many people consider to be the core of that exercise: religious worship. But the orders did so in order to …

Taking Stock Of The Religion Clauses, John D. Inazu

Scholarship@WashULaw

After a few decades of relative quiet, the Supreme Court has in recent years focused once again on the religion clauses and related statutes.

The Paradox Of Christian-Based Political Advocacy: A Reply To Professor Calhoun, Wayne R. Barnes

Wayne R. Barnes

Professor Calhoun, in his Article around which this symposium is based, has asserted that it is permissible for citizens to publicly argue for laws or public policy solutions based on explicitly religious reasons. Calhoun candidly admits that he has “long grappled” with this question (as have I, though he for longer), and, in probably the biggest understatement in this entire symposium, notes that Professor Kent Greenawalt identified this as “a particularly significant, debatable, and highly complex problem.” Is it ever. I have a position that I will advance in this article, but I wish to acknowledge at the outset that …

America's Creed: The Inevitable, Sometimes Dangerous, Mixing Of Religion And Politics, David M. Smolin

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Political and philosophical theorists have often advocated for the exclusion of some or all religious perspectives from full participation in politics. Such approaches create criteria—such as public accessibility, public reason, or secular rationale—to legitimate such exclusion. During the 1990s I argued, as an evangelical Christian, against such exclusionary theories, defending the rights to full and equal political participation by evangelical Christians, traditionalist Roman Catholics, and any others who would be restricted by such criteria.

The Paradox Of Christian-Based Political Advocacy: A Reply To Professor Calhoun, Wayne R. Barnes

Washington and Lee Law Review Online

Professor Calhoun, in his Article around which this symposium is based, has asserted that it is permissible for citizens to publicly argue for laws or public policy solutions based on explicitly religious reasons. Calhoun candidly admits that he has “long grappled” with this question (as have I, though he for longer), and, in probably the biggest understatement in this entire symposium, notes that Professor Kent Greenawalt identified this as “a particularly significant, debatable, and highly complex problem.” Is it ever. I have a position that I will advance in this article, but I wish to acknowledge at the outset that …

Render Unto Caesar: How Misunderstanding A Century Of Free Exercise Jurisprudence Forged And Then Fractured The Rfra Coalition, John S. Blattner

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis provides a comprehensive history of Supreme Court Free Exercise Clause jurisprudence from 1879 until the present day. It describes how a jurisdictional approach to free exercise dominated the Court’s rulings from its first Free Exercise Clause case in 1879 until Sherbert v. Verner in 1963, and how Sherbert introduced an accommodationist precedent which was ineffectively, incompletely, and inconsistently defined by the Court. This thesis shows how proponents of accommodationism furthered a false narrative overstating the scope and consistency of Sherbert’s precedent following the Court’s repudiation of accommodationism and return to full jurisdictionalism with Employment Division v. Smith …

God And State Preambles, Peter J. Smith, Robert W. Tuttle

Marquette Law Review

Those who question the permissibility of official acknowledgements of God might be surprised to learn that the preambles of forty-five of the fifty state constitutions expressly invoke God. The practice is common in both liberal and conservative states and is equally prevalent in all regions of the country. Virtually all of those preambles give thanks to God, and many also seek God's blessing n the state's endeavors. Yet there has been no detailed assessment of the preambles' history or significance. This paper seeks to remedy that gap.

The preambles complicate the claim that official acknowledgements of God are incompatible with …

Is It Unconstitutional To Prohibit Faith-Based Schools From Becoming Charter Schools?, Stephen D. Sugarman

Stephen D Sugarman

This article argues that it is unconstitutional for state charter school programs to preclude faith-based schools from obtaining charters. First, the “school choice” movement of the past 50 years is described, situating charter schools in that movement. The current state of play of school choice is documented and the roles of charter schools, private schools (primarily faith-based schools), and public school choice options are elaborated. In this setting I argue a) based on the current state of the law it would not be unconstitutional (under the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause) for states to elect to make faith-based schools eligible for …

Same-Sex Marriage And Jewish Law: Time For A New Paradigm?, Doron M. Kalir

Doron M Kalir

In recent years the Supreme Court, as well as important segments of society, has come to accept and even celebrate same-sex relations that in the past, and for some still today, have generated contempt, hostility, and violence. This change in law and culture poses a unique challenge for those who are moved by the plight of gay people yet concomitantly feel bound by their religious convictions and therefore prevented from providing religious legitimacy to people who yearn to be part of their community. Professor Kalir meets this challenge by proposing that the Torah (and Jewish law), read in context, accepts …

Free Exercise And The Definition Of Religion: Confusion In The Federal Courts, Mark Strasser

Mark Strasser

The United States Supreme Court has sent mixed messages about what constitutes religion for free exercise purposes. The Court’s failure to offer clear criteria has resulted in widely differing interpretations in the lower courts, resulting in dissimilar treatment of relevantly similar cases. Further, some of the circuit courts employ factors to determine what qualifies as religious that are much more restrictive than the factors employed by the Court.

This article describes some of the differing approaches to defining religion offered in the circuits, noting that one of the approaches adopted across a few circuits not only mischaracterizes the Supreme Court’s …

Definitions, Religion, And Free Exercise Guarantees, Mark Strasser

Mark Strasser

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the free exercise of religion. Non-religious practices do not receive those same protections, which makes the ability to distinguish between religious and non-religious practices important. Regrettably, members of the Court have been unable to agree about how to distinguish the religious from the non-religious—sometimes, the implicit criteria focus on the sincerity of the beliefs, sometimes the strength of the beliefs or the role that they play in an individual’s life, and sometimes the kind of beliefs. In short, the Court has virtually guaranteed an incoherent jurisprudence by sending contradictory signals with …

Sacred Cows, Holy Wars: Exploring The Limits Of Law In The Regulation Of Raw Milk And Kosher Meat, Kenneth Lasson

Kenneth Lasson

SACRED COWS, HOLY WARS Exploring the Limits of Law in the Regulation of Raw Milk and Kosher Meat By Kenneth Lasson Abstract In a free society law and religion seldom coincide comfortably, tending instead to reflect the inherent tension that often resides between the two. This is nowhere more apparent than in America, where the underlying principle upon which the first freedom enunciated by the Constitution’s Bill of Rights is based ‒ the separation of church and state – is conceptually at odds with the pragmatic compromises that may be reached. But our adherence to the primacy of individual rights …

The Right To An Exclusively Religious Education – The Ultra-Orthodox Community In Israel In Comparative Perspective, Gila Stopler

Gila Stopler

The ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Israel has its own separate education system which is funded by the state and in which boys are given an exclusively religious education with almost no exposure to secular subjects or to civic education. At the same time that the Israeli Supreme Court was scheduled to rule that the state may not continue to fund ultra-Orthodox private schools that do not teach the national core curriculum the Israeli parliament passed the Unique Cultural Educational Institutions Act which upholds the right of the ultra–Orthodox community to give their boys an exclusively religious education funded by the …

The Islamic Influence In (Pre-)Colonial And Early America: A Historico-Legal Snapshot, Nadia B. Ahmad

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Valuing Our Discordant Constitutional Discourse: Autonomous-Text Constitutionalism And The Jewish Legal Tradition, Shlomo C. Pill

Shlomo C. Pill

This paper considers the viability of autonomous-text constitutionalism, a constitutional interpretive and adjudicative theory based on Hans Georg-Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. As the paper explains, this theory is premised on the subjectivity of all interpretive activity; it admits the legitimacy of a wide spectrum of reasonable interpretations of the Constitution, each given their unique character by the dialectical merging of experiential horizons between the fixed text and individual interpreter. This theory embraces a plurality of constitutional meanings in theory, limited by the need for unity in national spheres of constitutional practice. Such practical certainty is achieved by our empowering judicial institutions …

A Corporation Has No Soul - The Business Entity Law Response To Challenges To The Contraceptive Mandate Under The Ppaca, Thomas E. Rutledge

Thomas E. Rutledge

The most contentious matter in the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the “PPACA”) is not a question of health care, but rather one of the law of business organizations. The dispute has been over the requirement that group health insurance plans provide, on a no-cost sharing basis, coverage for a variety of procedures and prescription medicines involving contraception and what are described as “abortificants.”

The class of suits subject to this discussion were filed by what are not religious organizations but rather for-profit business ventures, asserting that they should be exempt from the requirements of the …

Tactics, Strategies & Battles—Oh My!: Perseverance Of The Perpetual Problem Regarding Preaching To Public School Pupils & Why It Persists, Casey S. Mckay

Casey Scott McKay

After reviewing the history of the religious war on Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, my article, “Tactics, Strategies & Battles—Oh My!: Perseverance of the Perpetual Problem Regarding Preaching to Public School Pupils & Why it Persists,“ examines why such a seemingly well-settled issue survives and, to some extent, succeeds.

First, by exploiting common misconceptions among the American public, lawmakers are able to take advantage of ignorance driven by strong emotions. Next, religious special interests groups, with seemingly unlimited funds, thrust propaganda supported by worldwide media reinforcement on an already vulnerable American public. Thus, irresponsible state legislators, caught between a rock and …

Ideological Voting Applied To The School Desegregation Cases In The Federal Courts Of Appeals From The 1960’S And 70’S, Joe Custer

Joe Custer

This paper considers a research suggestion from Cass Sunstein to analyze segregation cases from the 1960's and 1970's and whether three hypothesis he projected in the article "Ideological Voting on Federal Courts of Appeals: A Preliminary Investigation," 90 Va. L. Rev. 301 (2004), involving various models of judicial ideology, would pertain. My paper considers Sunstein’s three hypotheses in addition to other judicial ideologies to try to empirically determine what was influencing Federal Court of Appeals Judges in regard to Civil Rights issues, specifically school desegregation, in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

The Naked Private Square, Ronald J. Colombo

Ronald J Colombo

In the latter half of the twentieth century, America witnessed the construction of a “wall of separation” between religion and the public square. What had once been commonplace (such as prayer in public schools, and religious symbols on public property) had suddenly become verboten. This phenomenon is well known and has been well studied.

Less well known (and less well studied) has been the parallel phenomenon of religion’s expulsion from the private square. Employment law, corporate law, and constitutional law have worked to impede the ability of business enterprises to adopt, pursue, and maintain distinctively religious personae. This is undesirable …

Litigating Religion, Michael A. Helfand

Michael A Helfand

This article considers how parties should resolve disputes that turn on religious doctrine and practice – that is, how people should litigate religion. Under current constitutional doctrine, litigating religion is generally the task of two types of religious institutions: first, religious arbitration tribunals, whose decisions are protected by arbitration doctrine, and religious courts, whose decision are protected by the religion clauses. Such institutions have been thrust into playing this role largely because the religion clauses are currently understood to prohibit courts from resolving religious questions – that is, the “religious question” doctrine is currently understood to prohibit courts from litigating …

The Ministerial Exception And The Limits Of Religious Sovereignty, Ian C. Bartrum

Ian C Bartrum

This paper explores the scope of independent religious sovereignty in the context of the ministerial exception.

Fighting For The Debtor's Soul: Regulating Religious Commercial Conduct, Michael A. Helfand

Michael A Helfand

Although courts often think of religion in terms of faith, prayer, and conscience, many religious groups are increasingly looking to religion as a source of law, commerce, and contract. As a result, courts are being called upon to regulate conduct that is simultaneously religious and commercial. In addressing such cases, some courts minimize the religious features of the case and simply focus on its secular elements while others over-exaggerate the religious features of the case and thereby refuse to adjudicate the dispute on Establishment Clause grounds. As an example of this dynamic, I explore the constitutionality of imposing sanctions for …

Religious Truth, Pluralism, And Secularization: The Shaking Foundations Of American Religious Liberty, Daniel O. Conkle

Articles by Maurer Faculty

In this Essay, I recount John Locke’s 1689 Letter Concerning Toleration and explain how religious liberty continues to rest on Lockean and related justifications. These various justifications depend in part on religious-moral reasoning (both Christian and non-Christian) and in part on political-pragmatic considerations. I then discuss recent and ongoing developments in the American religious landscape, including a radical increase in religious diversity, the modernization of traditional faiths, the individualization or "spiritualization" of religion, and the increasing secularization of individual belief structures. I suggest that these developments, over time, may seriously threaten the underlying religious-moral and political-pragmatic foundations of religious liberty …

Funding Stem Cell Research: The Convergence Of Science, Religion & Politics In The Formation Of Public Health Policy, Edward A. Fallone

Edward A Fallone

The controversy over the funding of stem cell research by the federal government is used as a case study for examining how policy choices are made in the field of public bioethics. This article examines the manner in which the decision to fund stem cell research has been influenced by the convergence of evolving scientific knowledge, conflicting religious values, and the role of elected officials in a representative democracy. The article begins by reviewing the current state of scientific knowledge concerning adult stem cells, embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, and the process of direct cell re-programming. Because each …

Education As A Counterterrorism Tool And The Curious Case Of The Texas School Book Resolution, Diane Webber

Diane Webber

As a case study, this paper reviews a resolution passed by the Texas State Board of Education on September 24, 2010. The resolution rejects certain Social Studies texts that contain what the Board determined were pro-Islamic/anti-Christian distortions…The resolution is itself doing what it complains about – it is showing “chronic partiality to one of the world’s great religions and animus against another.”…At a time when “reciprocal negative perceptions between the Western and Muslim worlds continue to escalate”, it is essential to acknowledge the important role of education to promote tolerance… The knowledge gained from religious tolerance education can then be …

Phony Originalism And The Establishment Clause, Andrew M. Koppelman

Faculty Working Papers

The "originalist" interpretations of the Establishment Clause by Supreme Court Justices William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas are remarkably indifferent to the original purposes of that clause. Their arguments are a remarkable congeries of historical error and outright misrepresentation. This is not necessarily a criticism of originalism per se. However, the abuse of originalist scholarship that these judges have practiced raises questions about what originalist scholars are actually accomplishing.

A Loss For Words: "Religion" In The First Amendment, Mason Binkley, J.D.

Mason Binkley, Esq.

No abstract provided.

Partial Textualism, Stephen Durden

Stephen Durden

This Article seeks to demonstrate that plain meaning textualists do not apply plain meaning textualism to the entire Constitution. Instead, plain meaning textualists indulge their personal predilections and apply the doctrine of “partial textualism,” which selectively applies plain meaning textualism to only part of, rather than the entire, Constitution. Partial textualism destroys any possible fairness value to plain meaning textualism. Indeed, such an approach is entirely inconsistent with the goals of plain language textualism. Through examining the Takings Clause, this Article demonstrates that a plain meaning textualist will commonly apply plain meaning textualism to a part of the Constitution that …

The Bridge Connecting Pontius Pilate's Sentencing Of Jesus To The New Jersey Death Penalty Study Commission's Concerns Over Executing The Innocent: When Human Beings With Human Flaws Determine Guilt Or Innocence And Life Or Death, James B. Johnston

James B Johnston

No abstract provided.