Law Commons^™

The Contraception Mandate And The Forgotten Constitutional Question, Zoe Robinson

College of Law Faculty

Litigation over the Contraception Mandate — which requires all employer insurance plans to include coverage for contraceptives — is quickly becoming one of the largest religious liberty challenges in American history. The most powerful claim raised by some of the litigants is that their status as “religious institutions” exempt them from compliance with the Mandate. But what is a religious institution, and who gets to become one — and why? Should the University of Notre Dame be treated the same as the Archdiocese of the District of Columbia? Should lobbying group Priests for Life be lumped together with Hobby Lobby, …

What Is A 'Religious Institution'?, Zoe Robinson

College of Law Faculty

Change in the First Amendment landscape tends towards the incremental, but the Supreme Court’s opinion two terms ago in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC — holding that religious institutions enjoy a range of First Amendment protections that do not extend to other individuals or organizations — is better understood as a jurisprudential earthquake. The suddenness and scale of the shift helps to explain the turmoil that has ensued in the lower courts and law journals. And yet, it could be that the biggest aftershock has yet to be felt. The Court left open the most important functional question that exists in scenarios …

Corporate Religious Liberty: Why Corporations Are Not Entitled To Religious Exemptions, Caroline Mala Corbin

Short Works

No abstract provided.

Rfra Exemptions From The Contraception Mandate: An Unconstitutional Accommodation Of Religion, Frederick Mark Gedicks, Rebecca G. Van Tassell

Faculty Scholarship

Litigation surrounding use of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to exempt employers from the Affordable Care Act’s “contraception mandate” is moving steadily towards resolution in the U.S. Supreme Court. Both opponents and supporters of the mandate, however, have overlooked the Establishment Clause limits on such exemptions.

The heated religious-liberty rhetoric aimed at the mandate has obscured that RFRA is a “permissive” rather than “mandatory” accommodation of religion — a government concession to religious belief and practice that is not required by the Free Exercise Clause. Permissive accommodations must satisfy Establishment Clause constraints, notably the requirement that the accommodation not impose …

Hobby Lobby And The Pathology Of Citizens United, Ellen D. Katz

Articles

Four years ago, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission held that for-profit corporations possess a First Amendment right to make independent campaign expenditures. In so doing, the United States Supreme Court invited speculation that such corporations might possess other First Amendment rights as well. The petitioners in Conestoga Wood Specialties Corp. v. Sebelius are now arguing that for-profit corporations are among the intended beneficiaries of the Free Exercise Clause and, along with the respondents in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby Stores, that they also qualify as “persons” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Neither suggestion follows inexorably from Citizens United, …

Hobby Lobby In Constitutional Waters: Two Life Rings And An Anchor, Gregory P. Magarian

Scholarship@WashULaw

Hobby Lobby's challenge to the contraception coverage provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the first Supreme Court case to test an application of RFRA to a federal law. For an introductory case, Hobby Lobby pushes RFRA·s conceptual envelope. Never before, under any constitutional or statutory provision, has the Court exempted a private, for profit business from the obligation to obey a generally applicable law. Most successful religious accommodation claims, whether constitutional or tatutory, have involved individual religious believers or groups of similarly situated believers. Religious institutions have occasionally but less frequently brought successful accommodation claims. Whatever …