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Religious Freedom In Private Lawsuits: Untangling When Rfra Applies To Suits Involving Only Private Parties, Sara Lunsford Kohen
Religious Freedom In Private Lawsuits: Untangling When Rfra Applies To Suits Involving Only Private Parties, Sara Lunsford Kohen
Sara Kohen
Religious Freedom in Private Lawsuits: Untangling When RFRA Applies to Suits Involving Only Private Parties, for publication discusses when courts should apply the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) in cases in which the federal government is not a party. Congress passed RFRA in reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith. The Court held in Smith that the Constitution does not require religious exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws—those that do not target religion and cover non-religious conduct to the same extent as religious conduct. By contrast, RFRA allows a federal law to substantially burden a religious …
Religious Freedom In Private Lawsuits: Untangling When Rfra Applies To Suits Involving Only Private Parties, Sara Lunsford Kohen
Religious Freedom In Private Lawsuits: Untangling When Rfra Applies To Suits Involving Only Private Parties, Sara Lunsford Kohen
Sara Kohen
Religious Freedom in Private Lawsuits: Untangling When RFRA Applies to Suits Involving Only Private Parties, for publication discusses when courts should apply the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) in cases in which the federal government is not a party. Congress passed RFRA in reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith. The Court held in Smith that the Constitution does not require religious exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws—those that do not target religion and cover non-religious conduct to the same extent as religious conduct. By contrast, RFRA allows a federal law to substantially burden a religious …
What Happened To Veggie Libel: Why Plaintiffs Are Not Using Agricultural Product Disparagement Statutes, Sara Kohen
What Happened To Veggie Libel: Why Plaintiffs Are Not Using Agricultural Product Disparagement Statutes, Sara Kohen
Sara Kohen
Agricultural product disparagement (“APD”) statutes create a cause of action based on negative statements made about agricultural products. When APD statutes were first enacted in the 1990s, legal scholars and the press criticized them as violating the First Amendment’s protection of speech and predicted that agricultural interests would use them to silence people who raised alarms about food safety. These concerns seemed well founded after beef producers sued Oprah Winfrey under the Texas APD statute for negative statements made about beef on her program. Despite these dire predictions, however, APD statutes have resulted in only two reported lawsuits. This article …