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Narrative Pluralism And The Doctrine Incoherence In Hosanna-Tabor, Frederick Mark Gedicks
Narrative Pluralism And The Doctrine Incoherence In Hosanna-Tabor, Frederick Mark Gedicks
Faculty Scholarship
In Hosanna-Tabor Church and School v. EEOC, the Supreme Court recognized for the first time that the Religion Clauses require a “ministerial exception” to federal antidiscrimination laws, holding that religious congregations have a broad and categorical immunity against government interference in ministerial employment decisions.
Hosanna-Tabor is filled with ironies. The case is as much about unjustified discrimination and administrative inconsistency as religious liberty. The Court’s endorsement of the exception as a feature of church autonomy overlooks that churches subvert autonomy as often as they protect it. The exception described by the Court is so broad, absolute, and inflexible that it …
Towards A Defensible Free Exercise Doctrine, Frederick Mark Gedicks
Towards A Defensible Free Exercise Doctrine, Frederick Mark Gedicks
Faculty Scholarship
Almost from the moment that the Supreme Court abandoned the religious exemption doctrine in Employment Division v. Smith, its defenders have worked to bring it back. More than a decade later, however, Smith remains well-entrenched; not only has the Court confirmed Smith's basic holding, but it also struck the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Congress's first effort to restore the exemption doctrine, at least as it applied to the states.
Proponents of religious exemptions cannot ignore the hard truth that they can no longer be defended. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, American society viewed the practice of religion-mostly Christian …