The exemption with lights to alert passengers would not have changed the
culture. It would not have significantly affected anyone’s right to drink
alcohol, or to transport alcohol. It would have allowed the scrupulous Muslim
cabbies to live their own religious values.
Hostility to religious liberty for a group that is doing no one any harm very
often reflects hostility to the group. Sometimes it reflects hostility to all
religion or to all exemptions for religious liberty, which is not much better.
But when there is a vast outpouring on a particular claim, disproportionate to
the usual debate over religious exemptions, it is more sensible to infer the
first explanation, hostility to the group.
Perhaps some imams said the cabbies were misreading the Koran. Good for the
imams. But not relevant to the cabbies’ understanding of their own religious
obligations, unless the imams persuade the cabbies.
The solution that Greg and Eugene describe was ingenious, and the reaction that
Greg describes is appalling. The problem we have in so many of these various
culture-war issues is that each side wants to write its own values into law,
and insist that the other side conform in any interaction that is the least bit
public. It is not enough that I can transport alcohol; Muslim cabbies must help
me transport it or lose their jobs and be barred from their industry. We cannot
restore social peace until we remember that in a regime of individual liberty,
the goal is to let both sides live their own values.
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
[mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Marci Hamilton
Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 5:59 PM
To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics
Cc: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics
Subject: Re: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = "tiny burden"?
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 be in the
company of nonbelievers, they should find another line of work.
Also-- a number of imams announced the cabbies were misreading the Koran.
There was no requirement they not transport others' cases of wine. No one was
asking them to drink the wine
We have crossed the line from legitimate claims to accommodation into the
territory where religious believers demand a "right" to exist in a culture that
mirrors their views. That is called Balkanization
Marci
On Mar 6, 2012, at 4:48 PM, "Sisk, Gregory C." <gcs...@stthomas.edu> wrote:
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 a taxi without
the light for those transporting liquor, so that the passenger would not be
inconvenienced or even realize what had happened. And this accommodation was
abandoned, not because of any concrete showing that it caused any problems for
passenger, but by the confession the airport commission’s spokesman, because of
a “public backlash” of emails and telephone calls. The spokesman said that
“the feedback we got, not only locally but really from around the country and
around the world, was almost entirely negative. People saw that as condoning
discrimination against people who had alcohol.” And not only did the airport
commission then revoke the accommodation, it began to treat the Muslim cabbies
even more harshly. Where previously the punishment for refusing a fare was to
be sent to the end of the line (which was a financial hardship because the wait
might be for additional hours), now the commission would suspend or revoke the
cab license. It is impossible, in my view, to understand the chain of
circumstances as anything other than antipathy toward Muslims – and the tenor
of the “public backlash” makes that even more obvious.
The Somali cab driver episode is described in the introduction to an empirical
study that Michael Heise and I have currently submitted to law reviews, finding
that, holding all other variables constant, Muslims seeking religious
accommodation in the federal courts are only about half as successful as
non-Muslims. A draft of the piece is on SSRN at:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1917057
Greg
Gregory Sisk
Laghi Distinguished Chair in Law
University of St. Thomas School of Law (Minnesota)
MSL 400, 1000 LaSalle Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55403-2005
651-962-4923
gcs...@stthomas.edu
<http://personal2.stthomas.edu/GCSISK/sisk.html>
http://personal.stthomas.edu/GCSISK/sisk.html
Publications: <http://ssrn.com/author=44545> http://ssrn.com/author=44545
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