Deportation and other burdens on religion

[Marty Lederman]

. . . or what if -- just hypothetically, of course -- the federal government systematically and specifically exploited religious fears, sensitivities and obligations of persons of a particular religion in order to degrade them and thereby coerce them to talk during interrogations, such as, for example (again, purely hypothetically here, of course), removing all religious items, forced shaving of facial hair, forced nudity, prohibiting them from praying during Ramadan unless they disregarded their religious obligation not to drink water, subjecting them to a drill known as "Invasion of Space by a Female," and hanging pictures of scantily clad women around their necks?    Assume, for purposes of this hypo, that the Religion Clauses do apply extraterritorially (see, e.g., Lamont v. Woods) to our conduct toward persons under our control, or, at the very least, that the government would (hypothetically) never resort to a technical non-extraterritoriality argument as justification for conduct that would concededly be unconstitutional here in the U.S.   Constitutional violation (hypothetically)? ----- Original Message ----- From: Mark Graber To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 8:41 AM Subject: Deporting Religious Teenagers To play a variation on Sandy's theme, what would be our response if the FBI was investigating teenage Christian evangelicals and deported a women who listened to a minister who refused to condemn abortion clinic bombings (or investigating teenage Zionists and deported a man who listed to the disciples of Meir Kahane).   Mark A. Graber >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/17/05 06:45AM >>> Theh following story appears in today's New York Times, about what some might call the persecution by the US of a young Moslem woman: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/nyregion/17suicide.html?pagewanted=4&th&emc=th My questions are as follows:  1.  Does the FBI's scrutiny of her religious views raise any questions with regard to the FE Clasue (or, for that matter, the Establishment Clause)?  2.  What would our response be if this story came from, say, China or Iran and involved a young Catholic who endorsed traditional Catholic views of "just war" against tyrants?  The latter question, of course, is not precisely a question about American constitutional law and may be considered inappropriate.  I assume, then, that it would be easy enough to translate the question into a more American context, if the teenager in question had been persuaded by religious-based theories of the legitimacy of tyrannicide. sandy _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private.  Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.

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