Law Commons^™

Establishment’S Political Priority To Free Exercise, Marc O. Degirolami

Notre Dame Law Review

Americans are beset by disagreement about the First Amendment. Progressive scholars are attacking the venerable liberal view that First Amendment rights must not be constricted to secure communal, political benefits. To prioritize free speech rights, they say, reflects an unjust inflation of individual interest over our common political commitments. These disagreements afflict the Religion Clauses as well. Critics claim that religious exemption has become more important than the values of disestablishment that define the polity. Free exercise exemption, they argue, has subordinated establishment.

This Article contests these views. The fundamental rules and norms constituting the political regime—what the Article calls …

Inviting An Impermissible Inquiry? Rfra’S Substantial-Burden Requirement And “Centrality”, D. Bowie Duncan

Pepperdine Law Review

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) prohibits the federal government from substan-tially burdening a person’s religious exercise unless the government can satisfy strict scrutiny. The statute also defines religious exercise to prohibit courts from inquiring into how central a particular religious exercise is to a person’s religion. “The term ‘religious exercise,’” reads the relevant provision, “includes any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief.” Despite this prohibition on centrality inquiries, some scholars argue that RFRA’s substantial-burden element requires courts to consider the religious costs a law imposes on a religious adherent …

Queer And Convincing: Reviewing Freedom Of Religion And Lgbtq+ Protections Post-Fulton V. City Of Philadelphia, Arianna Nord

Washington Law Review

Recent increases in LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination laws have generated new conversations in the free exercise of religion debate. While federal courts have been wrestling with claims brought under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment since the nineteenth century, city and state efforts to codify legal protections for LGBTQ+ individuals in the mid-twentieth century birthed novel challenges. Private individuals who do not condone intimate same-sex relationships and/or gender non-conforming behavior, on religious grounds seek greater legal protection for the ability to refuse to offer goods and services to LGBTQ+ persons. Federal and state courts must determine how to resolve these …