Eugene's distinction between the restaurant letting the Jewish member of the
party bring in his own kosher meal, and the restaurant changing its own
kitchen to provide a kosher meal for him, illustrates the difference between
a simple exemption from a rule and a the institution taking affirmative
Doug's distinction between exemptions and accommodations is helpful, but the
cause of the problem isn't limited to free exercise cases. If we are talking
about freedom of speech, for example, many people would describe the decision
of a bookstore to reject a request to carry particular books in
Frankly, common sense or at least a full evaluation of all of the non religious
interests seems lacking on the side of those claims accommodation.
On Mar 3, 2012, at 6:41 PM, Volokh, Eugene vol...@law.ucla.edu wrote:
The trouble with “common sense” is that it often points in
I am guessing that the leaders of this organization never dreamed of a Jewish
basketball team going to the finals. They never heard of Dolph Shayes or Nancy
Lieberman.
More seriously: If the organization (which includes many Christian schools)
played games on Sundays, would the Hebrew high
I agree with Paul's point, and realize that I should make my statement more
precise. Common sense tells us there is real value to following rules with a
minimum number of exceptions, and especially exceptions that are limited to
truly extraordinary situations. Indeed, if a tornado knocks out
Perhaps we need to distinguish between two types of accommodation: those that
burden third parties and those that do not. Making a non-sabbatarian work on
Saturday shifts a burden from a sabbatarian to a third party. Allowing an
orthodox Jew to bring a kosher meal to the non-kosher restaurant
I wonder whether this further shows the value of distinguishing
not just exemptions and accommodations, but discriminatory action and
nondiscriminatory action. For instance, I expect that few people would view a
bookstore owner's decision to close the store as censorship, or a
From: Volokh, Eugene
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2012 11:32 AM
To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics
Subject: RE: Israeli Postal Workers Object to Delivering New Testaments
There are, it seems to me, two significant differences between
the postal worker refusal and the taxi
There is significant precedent for one-religion sporting events, which I assume
everyone agrees is fine.Catholic Leagues exist in numerous cities And the
Maccabiah Games feature only Jewish athletes.
TAPPs' first mistake appears to have been opening itself up to religious
organizations
Eugene, I'm not sure I understand why the motive or purpose of the actor
controls whether the result of the actor's conduct should be viewed as a burden
on religious liberty or not. I might assign much less weight to the
discriminating actor's interest and consider his conduct more morally
It is hard to set up such a system for cab drivers -- think of cabbies waiting
at an airport where 6 in a row refuse passengers based on their possession of a
bottle of wine. It may be a longish wait or even a very long wait for the
non-discriminating cabbie. Or just hailing one on the street
the Maccabiah Games feature only Jewish athletes.
Nope. See http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-332,00.html
It's open to all Israeli citizens without regard to religion, and to Jews
who are not citizens (presumably because they have an automatic right of
citizenship, although I don't
I think that is not relevant.
I thought the Saturday afternoon/evening mass was for those who could not make
it to church Sunday morning.
An Orange County Register columnist, Frank Mickadeit, called it the slakers'
mass.
Alan
Law Office of Alan Leigh Armstrong
Office 18652 Florida St., Suite
The Catholic Leagues that I am familiar with are confined to competing
teams from Catholic schools (this would normally be grade schools and
middle schools). A not insignificant number of students at such schools
are not Catholic, but I don't know how or whether they accommodate
individuals. I'd
The ReligionClause blog has a very interesting post that nicely relates to our
Basketball Tournament topic.
Here is the money passage:
In Israel, mail carriers in the city of Ramat Gan are refusing to
deliver thousands of copies of the New Testament translated into Hebrew
that have been
Marty--Are nonJews, non Israelis included? That would be a surprise to me. I
know kids recruited and only Jews were
We were talking about leagues, not individual players. The Catholic leagues
are not open to my knowledge to non Catholic schools.
Marci
On Mar 6, 2012, at 12:42 PM,
Why is anger at a publicly licensed cab picking and choosing passengers
according to religious belief anything like anti-Muslim animus? Cabbies can't
reject passengers on race. Why should they be able to reject those with
religious beliefs different from their own? If they don't want to
Alan: You give examples of deliberate discrimination, but I thought we
were generally speaking about decisions not to change one's own affirmative
practices -- not just one's prohibitions (e.g., no-headgear rules) but also
one's choices to, for instance, play on a particular day -- in
Can this possibly be the right analysis?
(1) It seems to me that the law routinely distinguishes
between X discriminating against Y based on Y’s race or Y’s religion, and X
discriminating against Y based on X’s own religious beliefs that are
independent of Y’s
I agree with Paul here, and with the TAPPs ultimate decision which they should
have reached earlier. Rick seemed to imply that I and others might not agree
with it so I wanted to clarify my comments As I said originally, I was asking
the big picture question. These events have many moving
Seventh day Adventists keep Saturday sabbath like Jews do, sundown to sundown.
Or did when I counted myself among their numbers 35 years ago.
On Mar 4, 2012, at 4:55 AM, Saperstein, David dsaperst...@rac.org wrote:
H…… Take off for the Jewish Sabbath and see what you miss – even on the
I agree with a lot of what Marty says here (although some of us see Newdow as a
hecklers' veto case, rather than a religious liberty case).
I was invited to participate in a debate last year at Miami Law on the ground
zero mosque issue. Since I was the conservative/FedSoc tribute in these
An exemption is an accommodation to a person or set of persons or institutions
wanting their practices to be accommodated through not requiring them to abide
by the rules applicable to everyone else. That is in all meanings of the word
an accommodation. It is being left alone, but in a
In a sense this may be obvious, but it might be worth
restating: One thing that is facing the cabbies is that for complex reasons
cabbies are stripped of liberties that the rest of us take for granted. If we
disapprove of alcohol – whether because we’re Muslim or Methodist, or
If one looks at the tenor of the comments made to the airport commission after
a simple and invisible accommodation had been adopted, the conclusion of
anti-Muslim animus is difficult to escape. And given that this episode
occurred at the same time that Muslim cashiers at Target asked not to
For what it is worth, I find the arguments made by Eugene, Greg, and Doug
(among others) convincing. My one caveat: If the cabbies, as is common, live
in a city with an artificially restricted number of licenses, and if devout
Muslims comprise a (surprising?) percentage of those legally
I agree that the word liberty may be problematic here. Of course it depends
on the circumstances: some set of facts, or some particular state law regime,
might involve a public sports league, or some set of religious rights of
non-discrimination in a place of public accommodation. (Although,
I gernerally agree with Sandy's caveat (which of course does not mean that he
and I would agree on how to decide all the hard cases.)
If an individual, or a religious group, occupy a blocking position such that
their refusal to provide a service actually deprives others of the service,
then
Ryan, not sure why you are having a problem here. Let´s sort it out when
I have internet and get back.
Good afternoon,
My name is Ryan Sayers and I am a third year student at Duquesne
University School of Law. My Secularism and Religion in the Public Square
professor, Bruce Ledewitz,
Then that would settle the matter.
Gregory W. Hamilton, President
Northwest Religious Liberty Association
5709 N. 20th Street
Ridgefield, WA 98642
Office: (360) 857-7040
Website: www.nrla.com http://www.nrla.com/
http://www.nrla.com/
A non-partisan government relations and
I did mean ON school teams. The drawback of writing on a not so smart phone
while sitting in a faculty meeting. Sorry for the typo.
Connected by DROID on Verizon Wireless
-Original message-
From: Douglas Laycock dlayc...@virginia.edu
To: apos;Law Religion issues for Law
Are not the cabbies discriminating against customers on the basis of religion?
Or is the alcohol proxy enough to remove that taint?
Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 6, 2012, at 7:38 PM, Volokh, Eugene vol...@law.ucla.edu wrote:
In a sense this may be obvious, but it might be worth
Here is a general question to take us back to the bigger picture.
What should the rule for sports associations be in the future? Schedule
tournaments and finals only Mon through Sunday with attention to the religious
schedule?
How can you schedule such a tournament in light of the
I assume Paul meant on school teams, and not no school teams.
Douglas Laycock
Robert E. Scott Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Virginia Law School
580 Massie Road
Charlottesville, VA 22903
434-243-8546
From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu
In my judgment, Balkanization is much more likely to occur when religious
minorities are told that the only way that the can obtain accommodations of
their religious practices is by living in a community in which there are enough
members of their faith to exercise significant political power.
As Eugene suggestions, the accommodation by use of lights for Muslim cabbies
who objected to transporting visible liquor had every prospect of success.
Even airport officials agreed that it was an ingenious solution. It would have
been seamless and invisible, as the dispatcher would flag over
I thought we were concerned about people getting home from he airport.
Now the complaint is that the cabbie is making a religious judgment about the
passenger.
A religious judgment is a form of belief, and I thought it was common ground
that belief is protected absolutely, as the Court said
I don't have access to the cite, but some time in the 1980's the Jersey Supreme
Court decided a case called playcrafters upholding against an establishment
clause challenge a school rule banning non sport extra curricular activities
from(as I recall)Friday night through Sunday noon. the
That is, in my view, a misstatement of the facts. The person carrying the
alcohol holds a religious worldview that
permits them to drink, carry, and transport alcohol. The cabdriver refusing to
transport them is making a religious judgment about the passenger. The only
passengers you can be
It may well be that intentionally discriminatory actions by private
athletic organizations are better labeled as threats to religious equality
and not religious liberty; on the other hand, sometimes liberty rules
themselves embody equality norms (see, e.g., the shape of free speech
I disagree. I was in eastern Europe teaching students and talking to scholars
from the Balkans in Budapest a little less than
20 years ago. Here is how it was described: There was a time when people
would get on public transportation and no one was conscious of the religion of
the person
Doug-- This is actually hilarious. Reread my previous posts. You are not
even in the ballpark, as attested
to your notion that I was ever discussing religious judgments about
nonbelievers. I'm almost certain that
I was talking about believers and believers. I haven't backed off of
I apologize if I was too quick to generalize. Maybe you meant that it is OK to
make religious judgments about nonbelievers, but forbidden to make religious
judgments about drinkers. An implicit distinction that I completely missed.
On Tue, 6 Mar 2012 22:15:53 -0500 (EST)
hamilto...@aol.com
I don't think it is fair to the cabbies to say that they are discriminating on
the basis of religion, or that the alcohol is a proxy by which they are
trying to do so. If they said they wouldn't drive anyone wearing a priest's
collar or a nun's habit, that would be discriminating on the basis
Doug-- I don't know who the royal we is in your comment, but I'm not making
a complaint. I'm
making what is surely an obvious philosophical, analytical point. The person
carrying the wine is
not being picked up because they are carrying wine, which presumably is
permitted in their religious
My sense is that the system would work better than Steve
thinks, since I suspect that it would be rare that six cabbies in a row will
have this objection. It's true that, at least according to
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/709262.html, most cabbies in Minneapolis
are
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