I guess the difference is this; the owners of Hobby Lobby are free to do as
they choose; but Hobby Lobby is not a person; it takes advantage of all the
protections of corporations. Suppose the owners of Hobby Lobby deeply opposed
racial integration. In their private lives they could act on
off list I can only add Amen.
From: Douglas Laycock dlayc...@virginia.edu
To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu
Sent: Monday, July 7, 2014 1:33 AM
Subject: Re: On a different strand of the seamless web
Even in the rare case
i guess it was on list, but the analysis is the same
From: Paul Finkelman paul.finkel...@yahoo.com
To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu
Sent: Monday, July 7, 2014 3:48 AM
Subject: Re: On a different strand of the seamless web
i am not sure; my point is this that Hobby Lobby is NOT about individuals it is
about a company. I agree with Doug (and probably every on this list) that the
owners of Hobby should have religious liberty to avoid doing some things (but I
believe that is true for Smith in the Oregon case). My
Sandy,
Many people think millions of innocent babies have been intentionally killed.
It is nearly intolerable that a government would allow private persons to do
this (putting the child outside the protection of the law), and unthinkable
that a court would prevent the people from acting
Mark with all due respect, infanticide is illegal everywhere in the US and
anyone caught and convicted is punished.
Do you any evidence of mass killings of babies in this country? I have never
seen any evidence of this. Infanticide is pretty rare.
I know no jurisdiction that puts babies,
I think that the anti-war movement, despite the fact that some people
did not want to pay taxes to support what they regarded as immorality,
was different. The Hobby Lobby case seems to me to be a battle in the
culture wars. Furthermore RFRA give people a colorable tool to use in
courts.
Dear colleagues,
I suppose I am just echoing a point that Eugene made, but it seems to me
that -- while it is certainly possible to imagine settling, at the end of
the day, if only for pragmatic reasons, on a legal regime that did not
extend religion-related exemptions from generally applicable
On this point, I think we may have at least some degree of consensus: The
issue is not corporate v. noncorporate, or for-profit v. nonprofit; it is,
instead -- and has been ever since Prince, a case involving individuals
acting in the commercial sector for religious, nonprofit reasons -- whether
Paul: You said, “unlike Doug, I do not believe corporations are
people, that they have religious believes or that they have souls (that is of
course an understatement).” That strikes me as a statement that Doug does
believe that corporations are people (in the lay sense of the
I will admit I may have put words into Doug's mouth, and if so I apologize.
However, whether it is Doug or Justice Alito, it strikes me that the point is
the same. A for-profit corporation cannot have a soul or a religion. It is
not a person in that sense and I doubt any religion would say
I agree with most of what Marty says here. Commercial corporations do not have
dignitary rights such as the right to exercise religion. Human persons have
these rights and one can argue as Alito often but not always does that they
should not be held to have waived those rights because they
It would be helpful (at least to me), Eugene, if you provided a more complete
explanation of why you think there is no religious liberty issue in Town of
Greece. I see Town of Greece this way.
Residents go to town board meetings to participate in public comment to try to
influence the Board on
I noted before the possibility that there may be new rules that would make it
very difficult for employers to drop insurance coverage. Marty said that he
didn't know of any such initiative. He may be right. Here is the development
that I had heard of.
There is an IRS QA from this year
The short answer is that I'm persuaded by the majority's
analysis of the matter:
The analysis would be different if town board members directed the public to
participate in the prayers, singled out dissidents for opprobrium, or indicated
that their decisions might be influenced
I don't see how this works. First, the question isn't whether a
customer's going to the mall is a religious experience. The question is
whether the mall owner's decisions about how to run with the mall may be guided
or mandated by religious beliefs. A mall owner might, for
Lots of advocacy groups are organized as corporations. It is a very
common means of collecting money and engaging is supporting good causes.
The fact that it is a corporation should not undermine the idea that a
lot of well-meaning people have banded together to do something good. I
do not
I appreciate your prompt response, Eugene. Part of our disagreement clearly
relates to our understanding of social reality and I don't know that there is
much that can be usefully discussed in that regard. The passage you quote and
other language in the majority's opinion describe a world that
To be clear, I generally agree with the core opinion in Hobby Lobby. I think it
would have been a better opinion if it had not reached the conclusion that
commercial corporations have protected religious exercise rights for the
reasons I stated in my post.
I think a non-profit corporation is
Dear Alan,
Thanks for your as-always thoughtful and generous contributions to the
conversation. You wrote in your most recent email that [w]e can probably
protect the dignitary rights of the well-meaning people who have banded
together to do something good as a non-profit corporation without
Eugene: if you were at counsel table in the Supreme Court, waiting to
argue a case, and were uncomfortable (for religious reasons) standing in
respectful silence while Pamela Talkin intoned God save the United States
and this Honorable Court, would you dare stay seated, even though there's
no
1. Corporations: In discussing Citizens United and Hobby Lobby with
non-acedemics, I find that they tend to criticize the case because they
do not understand how corporations can be religious. For that reason I
would prefer to stress the substance of the legal fiction: the decision
goes for
I always thought that when the judges enter the court one stands out of
respect for the judges/court, and then sits down when the judges sit.
Jon
On 2014-07-07 17:05, Marty Lederman wrote:
Thats a different point, I think. I assume youd agree
I think the steep price would be closely related to the
perception that standing is not an expression of endorsement, but just of
disrespect. The judges would think dimly of me, I think, chiefly because I was
acting in a way that seems intentionally disrespectful of the
At my college graduation (at a private college), the chaplain (after praising
diversity to the hilt) asked us to stand up and shake each other’s hand as a
way of thanking Christ for the day. I confess to not feeling coerced and have
a sense, at least among my Jewish friends, that none felt
I was simply trying to make the point that there certainly is coercion, in
the SCOTUS and in the Greece Council, to stand in respectful silence and
not to sit or excuse one's self while a civic official prays in our name
to a god that not everyone believes in. I did so because of the suggestion
As Marty notes, this is a different issue, although it is still an important
one. I take Eugene’s most recent post to focus not on whether audience members
are being coerced, but whether they are coerced into engaging in religious
exercise.
There are situations where one stands for secular
Mark’s post raises a very interesting point, but it also, I
think, points to a deeper problem. In our culture, with its history, we have a
vast range of religious references. “The year of our Lord” (or “A.D.”) is one.
Place names – Corpus Christi, Los Cruces, Sacramento,
Alternatively, you do what the dissenters in Greece tried to do. You can’t get
rid of all Christian references in our culture for all sorts of reasons, good
and bad. But you can try to engage in some line-drawing. The chaplain at my
graduation went over any reasonable line that one might
Indeed, not hypothetical at all, although refuse to work with is stronger
than doesn't feel competent to work with. Chaplains have intentionally
reached across denominational and faith-tradition lines: Joe Lieberman was
fairly effusive in his praise for former chaplain Richard Halverson and the
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