Well, let me ask you this: How does RFRA deal with these cases? With general
applicability, we can begin with the rule and the exceptions therein. The
plaintiff can't simply attack the rule -- he can't simply say the rule serves
unimportant interests -- he can only instead suggest the rule's
I think there is a real question as to whether the rule here is generally
applicable. By allowing a witness who is more than 100 miles away to testify
by written deposition, Michigan has made a value judgment -- whatever the value
of demeanor evidence, it is not worth forcing witnesses to
Good point. I would add that the burden on a devout Muslim woman
to unveil is clearly greater than the burden of traveling 100 miles
with modern transportation.
Quoting Christopher C. Lund [EMAIL PROTECTED]:
I think there is a real question as to whether the rule here is
generally
I don't see how this can be other than generally applicable. But
it does expose the problems with generally applicable as a standard.
Steve
On Dec 18, 2006, at 4:31 PM, Christopher C. Lund wrote:
I think there is a real question as to whether the rule here is
generally applicable. By
The check on all of these is that the religious claimant has to analogize his
claim for exception to a preexisting secular exception. He or she has to
convince the court that the secular exception already harms the rule more than
the religious claim for exception would. A religious group
So how would you handle a religious person who feels a religious
duty to discriminate based on sex, and analogizes to the BFOQ exception,
which lets people discriminate based on sex for privacy reasons, or for
artistic verisimilitude reasons? My right to practice my religion,
he'd say, is
I think a better alternative would be to listen to the testimony from
the veiled plaintiff and then if the court decides that it can't judge
her credibility adequately, then she fails to prove her case by
failing to carry her burden.
As a former litigator, I think for the most part demeanor was
This case was in the news in mid-October, but I just got a scanned
version of the transcript, and I thought I'd pass it along. I have a
PDF at http://volokh.com/files/ginnahmuhammad.pdf .
Eugene
Ginnah Muhammad d/b/a Sisters of Second Chance v. Enterprise Rent-A-Car,
Small Claims Hearing
