My thoughts on the longer-term ramifications of the decision. The upshot is that I think it's very important in two respects: (i) the strong affirmation of the holding in *Thomas *that civil authorities cannot evaluate religious claims that X is a forbidden form of complicity with evil; and, most importantly, as Micah, Rich and Nelson also stress in their Slate piece, (ii) the shocking abandonment of pre-Smith doctrine as a guide to applying RFRA.
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2014/07/hobby-lobby-part-xviii-one-potentially.html As I say in the post, Chip was right 20 years ago: Even if one favors a statutory regime of religious accommodation, and thus supported RFRA -- as I do and I did -- it turns out to have been a huge mistake for Congress to use the words of strict scrutiny, when virtually no one supporting the legislation actually favored such scrutiny. In an age of Scalian textualism, that was a disaster waiting to happen . . . and now, perhaps, it has. I'm curious: Does anyone on the list (i) think the Court was right to say (or at least come very close to holding) that pre-Smith doctrine is inapposite to RFRA; and/or (ii) still think it was a good idea for Congress to use least-restrictive-means language in RFRA?
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