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Religious Employers And Labor Law: Bargaining In Good Faith, Charlotte Garden

Faculty Articles

This Article explores an important question that follows in the wake of last Term’s decision in Hobby Lobby v. Burwell: When employee rights under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) and employer religious commitments conflict, which will have priority? This is a surprisingly difficult question to which multiple statutory regimes arguably apply. First, there is the NLRA itself. The NLRA does not exempt religious employers on its face, but the Supreme Court nonetheless construed it to exclude certain religious employers in NLRB v. Catholic Bishop. Catholic Bishop is remarkable: as an exercise of constitutional avoidance the Court adopted an implausible …