Religious Freedom

From wedding cakes to contraception and employment rights, religious freedom claims are being challenged as violations of equality and the Establishment Clause notion that religious reasons cannot justify coercion. Recent cases such as Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. challenge the Jeffersonian idea that free exercise can be understood as a private right to conscience.1 I argue that when private religious claims place sufficiently state-like coercive pressure on others we should require accessible public justification. Doing so suggests that the Supreme Court of the United States should be attentive to the relationship and power dynamic between those claiming an exemption and those affected. Such an approach produces a holistic application of the principles of free exercise and anti-establishment. While existing approaches, such as those focused on third-party harm, attempt to solve this problem through focus on the effects of religious accommodation, I suggest we should focus not on harm proper but on the coerciveness of the relationship between those requesting religious accommodation and those affected by such requests.

Coercion (linguistics) · Commission · Conscience · Establishment Clause · First amendment · Free Exercise Clause · Harm · Political science · Politics · Private rights · Religious freedom · Separation of church and state · Sociology · Supreme court · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Legal and Constitutional Studies · Multicultural Socio-Legal Studies · Philosophy