Just a slight emendation to Doug's post, with which I think he'll agree:
Yes, virtually every Justice has concluded that religious accommodations
*can be* constitutional, at least if they alleviate significant
state-imposed burdens on religious exercise, as the Ohio prison
accommodation would
I don’t think this is quite a “religion-based exemption,” in the
sense that exemptions from generally applicable laws are religion-based
exemptions. The state is promulgating a rule that is facially religion-neutral
– no pork is just as facially religion-neutral as no horsemeat.
I should have added to the post below that the policy might create as much
conflict as it eliminates, just as would a vegetarian diet.
Ellis M. West
Emeritus Professor of Political Science
University of Richmond, VA 23173
804-289-8536
ew...@richmond.edu
From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu
Some Jews believe that halacha requires them to eat meat on Shabbos. That said,
for many observant Jewish prisoners, solutions like the BOP common fare program
have been sufficient.
I should note that in Germany my understanding is that the courts have upheld
against challenge under Art. 20a
Although the District Court may be correct in saying that the primary purpose
of the policy is not to establish the religion of Islam or to promote the
practice of Islam, it does concede that the policy makes accommodating a
multitude of religious practices and beliefs easier and more
The Conference of Catholic Bishops just issued this major Statement on
Religious Liberty:
http://usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/upload/Our_First_Most_Cherished_Liberty.pdf
I'd be curious to hear what others think of it. Its basic thrust is that
religious liberty is now acutely
Ellis, the government accommodates people all of the time. By law, it
is required to accommodate certain groups of people--e.g., to build
ramps so that citizens can get into public buildings, to provide waivers
of rules to certain people who get public benefits. I can't legally
insist that the
By the way, I agree that imposing a religious practice on everyone else is
deeply problematic. Perhaps justifable in the prison context, where many rights
have been forfeited anyway. But a ban on the sale of pork in the civilian
economy could not be justified as a religious exemption.
On Thu,
That's correct. The case you cite, the 2006 decision of the Federal
Administrative Court, held that the constitutionality of the exemption
provision in the animal protection act is unaffected by the constitutional
amendment. The court said that the animal protection state objective does
not
Ellis West and I have discussed our posts off list, and I may have been
attacking a bit of a straw man. He says he did not mean to suggest that
religious exemptions are generally suspect under the Establishment Clause; he
was still writing in the context of the no-pork policy for the prison
I think that at least part of the objections in Europe to serving only
halal meat in some restaurants involves objections to methods of halal
animal slaughter which (like kosher slaughter) may not be consistent with
European standards for humane treatment of animals in their use as food.
Halal
Just saw this response from the editors of Commonweal:
Today, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Ad Hoc Committee
for Religious Liberty released a statement, “Our First, Most Cherished
Permit me to elaborate somewhat on Marci’s statement. (1) The Bishops’
Statement fails to distinguish between laws that discriminate against a
religion or religious belief/practice, i.e., laws whose primary purpose is to
inhibit or harm a religious belief/practice, and laws that
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