Re: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
Just one thing about Islam -- it is is like Protestantism insofar as the interpretation of the Quran is between a person had god -- and no one has the power to say that an interpretation is wrong. So even if the imam (those learned in the Quran) were to issue an opinion, it is not binding. But as in the case of Protestantism where each person stands before his or her god alone without intermediaries or anyone to make in intercession, the lay folk do listen to the learned folk, generally. On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 3:14 PM, Volokh, Eugene vol...@law.ucla.edu wrote: (1) Can you say a bit more about the circumstances of the hour-long delays, given that it seems that many cab drivers were happy to transport anyone who is willing to pay? Were they at the airport, with dispatches cabs, or with cabs hailed on the street? ** ** (2) Can you also please say a bit more about the cabbies’ reactions to the imams’ statements – is it just that they *all* said “OK, no problem then”? Or did some continue to insist on their own interpretation of the religious doctrine? If a few did persist in their “it’s sinful for us to transport alcohol” view, then I would think their position would be constitutionally protected – and the fact that there were so few would cut *in favor* of an exemption, because it would reduce the likelihood of the hour-long delays that are being discussed, no? ** ** Marci Hamilton writes: ** -- Prof. Steven Jamar Howard University School of Law Associate Director, Institute of Intellectual Property and Social Justice (IIPSJ) ___ 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.
RE: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
Yes, State v. Hershberger, 462 N.W.2d 393 (Minn. 1990). Eugene From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Marci Hamilton Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 12:18 PM To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Cc: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden? Eugene-- just a point of information--is there a lead MN Sup Court case that applying strict scrutiny in cases involving neutral generally applicable laws and worship conduct that is illegal? Thanks! On Mar 7, 2012, at 3:11 PM, Volokh, Eugene vol...@law.ucla.edumailto:vol...@law.ucla.edu wrote: But the Minnesota Constitution has been interpreted as following Sherbert and Yoder, so isn’t the question indeed why the cab drivers aren’t constitutionally entitled to an exemption? As it happens, I oppose constitutional exemption regimes, at the state and federal levels, and support jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction RFRAs, which means the question becomes statutory, and trumpable by the state legislature. But the Minnesota rule is one of constitutionally mandated exemptions, unless strict scrutiny is satisfied, no? Eugene From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edumailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Steven Jamar Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 7:22 AM To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden? For the record, I was in favor of the accommodation attempted for the Somali Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis and am in favor of most accommodations of religion done by employers and public agencies and the government in general -- even quite odd ones like this particular interpretation of the Quran by this group of Somalis. But that is quite different from positing that there is a right in the Somalis to engage in this sort of discrimination let alone a constitutional right to do so. Doug is right -- sometimes hostility to religious accommodation is motivated by a universalist thrust that we should in fact all be treated equally -- the same sort of hostility one sees against affirmative action for Blacks. And Doug is also right that sometimes the hostility is directed against a religion and members of that religion -- as JWs, Muslims, Jews, and in some settings and some times, Catholics and others have experienced (19th Century Baptist prayer -- God save us from the Unitarians who at the time had circuit riders and were quite evangelical, unlike today). No doubt both of these played into this event -- especially hostility to Islam. But the subtextual motivation of hostility to the religion cannot make what is otherwise lawful discrimination unlawful, or does it? Is there a constitutionally meaningful distinction between -- I don't like your religion and therefor will not accommodate you and I don't think you are entitled to an accommodation as a matter of constitutional right -- where there is in fact no constitutional right to accommodation, as here. Steve ___ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edumailto: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. ___ 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.
RE: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
(1) Can you say a bit more about the circumstances of the hour-long delays, given that it seems that many cab drivers were happy to transport anyone who is willing to pay? Were they at the airport, with dispatches cabs, or with cabs hailed on the street? (2) Can you also please say a bit more about the cabbies’ reactions to the imams’ statements – is it just that they all said “OK, no problem then”? Or did some continue to insist on their own interpretation of the religious doctrine? If a few did persist in their “it’s sinful for us to transport alcohol” view, then I would think their position would be constitutionally protected – and the fact that there were so few would cut in favor of an exemption, because it would reduce the likelihood of the hour-long delays that are being discussed, no? Marci Hamilton writes: Thanks Eugene for taking us back to the facts. I received many emails and calls regarding the situation and there were people who had to wait an hour for a cab because of the objection. None of them were anti-Muslim. They did have the sense that the cabbies were discriminating against them because they did not share their religious affiliation. I raised earlier the fact that the imams had intervened saying there was no rule about transporting alcohol because that is why the issue died away and did not resurface. Marci ___ 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.
RE: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
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
Re: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
For the record, I was in favor of the accommodation attempted for the Somali Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis and am in favor of most accommodations of religion done by employers and public agencies and the government in general -- even quite odd ones like this particular interpretation of the Quran by this group of Somalis. But that is quite different from positing that there is a right in the Somalis to engage in this sort of discrimination let alone a constitutional right to do so. Doug is right -- sometimes hostility to religious accommodation is motivated by a universalist thrust that we should in fact all be treated equally -- the same sort of hostility one sees against affirmative action for Blacks. And Doug is also right that sometimes the hostility is directed against a religion and members of that religion -- as JWs, Muslims, Jews, and in some settings and some times, Catholics and others have experienced (19th Century Baptist prayer -- God save us from the Unitarians who at the time had circuit riders and were quite evangelical, unlike today). No doubt both of these played into this event -- especially hostility to Islam. But the subtextual motivation of hostility to the religion cannot make what is otherwise lawful discrimination unlawful, or does it? Is there a constitutionally meaningful distinction between -- I don't like your religion and therefor will not accommodate you and I don't think you are entitled to an accommodation as a matter of constitutional right -- where there is in fact no constitutional right to accommodation, as here. Steve On Mar 6, 2012, at 6:29 PM, Douglas Laycock wrote: 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
Re: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
The cabbies no longer had a problem once the imams spoke, so your reference to their own religious understandings is nonsensical in this case. Just for the record, Doug, I actually know the doctrine, so I get that one can have a view different from one's religious leaders.I also read all of the cases saying that there is an absolute right to believe. I think there is real force to Steve's suggestion about common carrier rules and standards. No one defending the cabbies, particularly Doug, has adequately explained away the need for them. And I am not persuaded that this is not like the race cases. The point of the industry is to transport people, and the imposition of selection not related to travel is problematic. No one, including cabbies owns their industry. That is a rhetorical sleight of hand that attempts to build in some kind of right to choose any industry you want. The Court has assigned such interests the most deferential level of rationality review, so that is a true non-starter. Where is the concept of personal responsibility, personal choice, and accepting the consequences of one's beliefs? The world, particularly the transportation industry, should not have to be conformed to the views of any one religious set of actors. The Amish are not going after high-tech jobs and then arguing that they don't believe in high tech, are they? You tipped your hand when you referred to those whose religious world view permits alcohol consumption as looser and those who object as having more scrupulous morals. Your analysis appears to be more about your preferred public policy vision than the law. Marci A. Hamilton Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law Yeshiva University 55 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10003 (212) 790-0215 hamilto...@aol.com -Original Message- From: Douglas Laycock dlayc...@virginia.edu To: 'Law Religion issues for Law Academics' religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu Sent: Wed, Mar 7, 2012 8:13 am Subject: RE: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden? 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
RE: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
But the Minnesota Constitution has been interpreted as following Sherbert and Yoder, so isn't the question indeed why the cab drivers aren't constitutionally entitled to an exemption? As it happens, I oppose constitutional exemption regimes, at the state and federal levels, and support jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction RFRAs, which means the question becomes statutory, and trumpable by the state legislature. But the Minnesota rule is one of constitutionally mandated exemptions, unless strict scrutiny is satisfied, no? Eugene From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Steven Jamar Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 7:22 AM To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden? For the record, I was in favor of the accommodation attempted for the Somali Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis and am in favor of most accommodations of religion done by employers and public agencies and the government in general -- even quite odd ones like this particular interpretation of the Quran by this group of Somalis. But that is quite different from positing that there is a right in the Somalis to engage in this sort of discrimination let alone a constitutional right to do so. Doug is right -- sometimes hostility to religious accommodation is motivated by a universalist thrust that we should in fact all be treated equally -- the same sort of hostility one sees against affirmative action for Blacks. And Doug is also right that sometimes the hostility is directed against a religion and members of that religion -- as JWs, Muslims, Jews, and in some settings and some times, Catholics and others have experienced (19th Century Baptist prayer -- God save us from the Unitarians who at the time had circuit riders and were quite evangelical, unlike today). No doubt both of these played into this event -- especially hostility to Islam. But the subtextual motivation of hostility to the religion cannot make what is otherwise lawful discrimination unlawful, or does it? Is there a constitutionally meaningful distinction between -- I don't like your religion and therefor will not accommodate you and I don't think you are entitled to an accommodation as a matter of constitutional right -- where there is in fact no constitutional right to accommodation, as here. Steve ___ 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.
RE: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
A point of information about Hershberger that is relevant here to the internal debate within the Somali community about what is required (per what my colleagues who represented the Amish said.) The Amish were split on the question of whether they could, under their community regulations, put an orange triangle on their buggies (the free exercise objection), whether the state's later solution of a black and white triangle with reflective tape was permissible, or whether they should reject the triangle altogether. As with Kiryas Joel, this controversy caused rifts within the Amish community. Perhaps that was in part because the Ordnungen of Amish communities are apparently local, just as the juridical schools that Muslims follow are often local or even sub-local. But, that's a religious freedom reason to try to work out a workable administrative accommodation rather than relying on the courts to resolve rights vs. rights cases, if one believes that part of the value of religious freedom is the value of religious communities. Marie A. Failinger Professor of Law Editor, Journal of Law and Religion Hamline University School of Law 1536 Hewitt Avenue Saint Paul, MN 55104 U.S.A. 651-523-2124 (work phone) 651-523-2236 (work fax) mfailin...@hamline.edu (email) Volokh, Eugene vol...@law.ucla.edu 3/7/2012 2:23 PM Yes, State v. Hershberger, 462 N.W.2d 393 (Minn. 1990). Eugene From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Marci Hamilton Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 12:18 PM To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Cc: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden? Eugene-- just a point of information--is there a lead MN Sup Court case that applying strict scrutiny in cases involving neutral generally applicable laws and worship conduct that is illegal? Thanks! On Mar 7, 2012, at 3:11 PM, Volokh, Eugene vol...@law.ucla.edu wrote: But the Minnesota Constitution has been interpreted as following Sherbert and Yoder, so isn’t the question indeed why the cab drivers aren’t constitutionally entitled to an exemption? As it happens, I oppose constitutional exemption regimes, at the state and federal levels, and support jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction RFRAs, which means the question becomes statutory, and trumpable by the state legislature. But the Minnesota rule is one of constitutionally mandated exemptions, unless strict scrutiny is satisfied, no? Eugene From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Steven Jamar Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 7:22 AM To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden? For the record, I was in favor of the accommodation attempted for the Somali Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis and am in favor of most accommodations of religion done by employers and public agencies and the government in general -- even quite odd ones like this particular interpretation of the Quran by this group of Somalis. But that is quite different from positing that there is a right in the Somalis to engage in this sort of discrimination let alone a constitutional right to do so. Doug is right -- sometimes hostility to religious accommodation is motivated by a universalist thrust that we should in fact all be treated equally -- the same sort of hostility one sees against affirmative action for Blacks. And Doug is also right that sometimes the hostility is directed against a religion and members of that religion -- as JWs, Muslims, Jews, and in some settings and some times, Catholics and others have experienced (19th Century Baptist prayer -- God save us from the Unitarians who at the time had circuit riders and were quite evangelical, unlike today). No doubt both of these played into this event -- especially hostility to Islam. But the subtextual motivation of hostility to the religion cannot make what is otherwise lawful discrimination unlawful, or does it? Is there a constitutionally meaningful distinction between -- I don't like your religion and therefor will not accommodate you and I don't think you are entitled to an accommodation as a matter of constitutional right -- where there is in fact no constitutional right to accommodation, as here. Steve ___ 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
Re: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
Eugene-- just a point of information--is there a lead MN Sup Court case that applying strict scrutiny in cases involving neutral generally applicable laws and worship conduct that is illegal? Thanks! On Mar 7, 2012, at 3:11 PM, Volokh, Eugene vol...@law.ucla.edu wrote: But the Minnesota Constitution has been interpreted as following Sherbert and Yoder, so isn’t the question indeed why the cab drivers aren’t constitutionally entitled to an exemption? As it happens, I oppose constitutional exemption regimes, at the state and federal levels, and support jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction RFRAs, which means the question becomes statutory, and trumpable by the state legislature. But the Minnesota rule is one of constitutionally mandated exemptions, unless strict scrutiny is satisfied, no? Eugene From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Steven Jamar Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2012 7:22 AM To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden? For the record, I was in favor of the accommodation attempted for the Somali Muslim cab drivers in Minneapolis and am in favor of most accommodations of religion done by employers and public agencies and the government in general -- even quite odd ones like this particular interpretation of the Quran by this group of Somalis. But that is quite different from positing that there is a right in the Somalis to engage in this sort of discrimination let alone a constitutional right to do so. Doug is right -- sometimes hostility to religious accommodation is motivated by a universalist thrust that we should in fact all be treated equally -- the same sort of hostility one sees against affirmative action for Blacks. And Doug is also right that sometimes the hostility is directed against a religion and members of that religion -- as JWs, Muslims, Jews, and in some settings and some times, Catholics and others have experienced (19th Century Baptist prayer -- God save us from the Unitarians who at the time had circuit riders and were quite evangelical, unlike today). No doubt both of these played into this event -- especially hostility to Islam. But the subtextual motivation of hostility to the religion cannot make what is otherwise lawful discrimination unlawful, or does it? Is there a constitutionally meaningful distinction between -- I don't like your religion and therefor will not accommodate you and I don't think you are entitled to an accommodation as a matter of constitutional right -- where there is in fact no constitutional right to accommodation, as here. Steve ___ 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. ___ 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.
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://personal.stthomas.edu/GCSISK/sisk.html Publications: http://ssrn.com/author=44545 From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Volokh, Eugene Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 12:28 PM To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden? 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 Somalis, and “many of them” are Muslims (by which the story likely means observant Muslims). But my guess is that no more than a third or so will likely have this objection, and that most will take whatever fares they want. This might be why the Minneapolis Metropolitan Airports Commission was indeed planning to institute a color-coded light scheme (see the story linked to above); it would be interesting to see if this was tried and what the results were. I realize that it’s speculation both ways, but, especially given that Minnesota courts take a Sherbert/Yoder view of the state religious freedom provision, I would think that the burden would be on the government to try something and show it fails. On the other hand, I’m not sure how one can get to the conclusion that this is a “tiny burden” on the cabbies. Apparently the cabbies believe their religion bars them from transporting alcohol; that may seem unreasonable to us, but our judgment about reasonableness shouldn’t matter for substantial burden purposes. And if the claim is that the burden is “tiny” because they can just “get a different job,” I just don’t see how this can be so, especially given cases such as Sherbert: For many unskilled immigrants, there are very well-paying jobs out there, especially
RE: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
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 race or religion. In many states, for instance, a lawyer can’t reject a client based on the client’s race, but I take it that a lawyer could refuse to represent banks on the grounds that the lawyer believes that charging interest is evil – or for that matter could refuse to represent liquor stores on the grounds that the lawyer believes that liquor is evil. Likewise, under Title VII an employer can’t fire an employee based on the employee’s race, but it can fire an employee based on the employee’s adultery (assuming it applies this rule equally to men and women), even when the employer’s hostility to adultery stems from the employer’s religious beliefs. There is the separate question, of course, of whether taxicab drivers should be required to take all comers, without regard to race, baggage, or anything else. But this has nothing to do with the race discrimination analogy. Rather, the issue is whether there ought to be a religious exemption to the take-all-comers rule, a very different question than whether there ought to be a religious exemption to various race discrimination bans. (2) How it could possibly be relevant, for purposes of religious accommodation law, that “a number of imams announced the cabbies were misreading the Koran”? The question, given Thomas, is what the cabbies sincerely thought, not what “a number of” religious leaders think. Eugene From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Marci Hamilton Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 2:59 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 ___ 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.
RE: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
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 be required to handle pork, it was fell into a context in which simple accommodations offered to others – such as allowing a cashier allergic to peanuts not to handle peanuts or peanut butter – became the subject of vehement public objection when Muslims were asking for the same kind of thing. During these controversies in the Twin Cities, the repeated messages that Muslims were not genuine Americans and should learn to be “Americans” (that is, think and behave the same as the majority) spoke plainly. To say that some imams said the cabbies were misreading the Koran is hardly an answer. In contrast with, say, Catholicism, in which there is a clear hierarchy that leads to a definite answer on at least some questions, Islam is not organized in that manner. Surely we ought not be imposing a Catholic structure of decision-making as the measure of what counts as a legitimate religious claim. What is important is that the religious leaders of the Islamic community to which these cab drivers belonged had issued an Islamic law decision that was the continuing basis for the objection. The sincerity of the religious belief was never in question. And how exactly does an easily-accommodated objection to visibly and knowingly transporting alcohol become transmogrified into American Somali cab drivers as “reject[ing] those with religious beliefs different than their own” or not “want[ing] to be in the company of nonbelievers”? Come on! Let’s remember the nature of the accommodation requested. The cab drivers did not ask the culture to mirror their values. They did not seek to avoid transporting anyone whose views differed from their own. Despite the rumors generated by the anti-Muslim backlash, they not only did not refuse to transport blind people with seeing-eye dogs but offered to provide such transportation at no charge during a convention of the blind in Minneapolis. Nor did they ask anyone whether they had alcohol in their baggage. The religious stricture applied only when the liquor was visible and thus they were being asked knowingly to transport alcohol beverages. There was no showing that the accommodation by a light on the cab would not work well or would inconvenience passengers. There simply was an unwillingness to accommodate these Muslims at all because it was unpopular with a vocal group. Far from any legitimate concern here about balkanization, the real concern is about petty tyranny to override the conscience of a small minority without any concrete reason other than majority antipathy and governmental licensing power. We are talking about the least powerful group in society: Somali immigrants who are trying to improve their lives by taking a low-paying job as cab drivers, earning very little each day, but committed to becoming contributing members of society. (Incidentally, they are also among the most respectful and law-abiding citizens you’ll ever meet. The Twin Cities has to be the only city in the world in which the slowest moving vehicles on the road are cabs – because these Muslim cab drivers take the speed limit seriously as a legal rule they should obey.) To turn them away, refuse to make a sensible accommodation, and then accuse them of demanding that culture be changed to mirror their views is not worthy of a free society. 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://personal.stthomas.edu/GCSISK/sisk.htmlhttp://personal2.stthomas.edu/GCSISK/sisk.html Publications: http://ssrn.com/author=44545 From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Marci Hamilton Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 4:59 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
RE: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
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. Religious accommodations allow people of different faiths to live together in religiously heterogeneous, integrated communities. The rejection of accommodations not only forces people to find another line of work. It persuades them that they need to find another place to live. That’s Balkanization. Alan From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Marci Hamilton Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 2:59 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 ___ 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.
RE: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
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://personal.stthomas.edu/GCSISK/sisk.htmlhttp://personal2.stthomas.edu/GCSISK/sisk.html Publications: http://ssrn.com/author=44545 From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Volokh, Eugene Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 12:28 PM To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden? 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 Somalis, and many of them are Muslims (by which the story likely means observant Muslims). But my guess is that no more than a third or so will likely have this objection, and that most will take whatever fares they want. This might be why the Minneapolis Metropolitan Airports Commission was indeed planning to institute a color-coded light scheme (see the story linked to above); it would be interesting to see if this was tried and what the results were. I realize that it's speculation both ways, but, especially given that Minnesota courts take a Sherbert/Yoder view of the state religious freedom provision, I would think that the burden would be on the government to try something and show it fails. On the other hand, I'm not sure how one can get to the conclusion that this is a tiny burden on the cabbies. Apparently the cabbies believe their religion bars them from transporting alcohol; that may seem unreasonable to us, but our judgment about reasonableness shouldn't matter for substantial burden purposes. And if the claim is that the burden is tiny because they can just get a different job, I just don't see how this can be so, especially given cases such as Sherbert: For many unskilled immigrants, there are very well-paying jobs out there, especially in this economy. Perhaps the burden might be justified, but how can we really say that it's tiny? Eugene From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Steven Jamar Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 10:14 AM To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: Israeli Postal Workers Object to Delivering New Testaments 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 -- where would the sign be displayed? When would the discussion take place? How? Tiny burden on those cabbies, it seems to me. And if they can't abide by the rules, get a different job. Public accommodations
Re: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
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 sitting next to you. They lived in a shared culture where one's religious beliefs were not a barrier to riding on public transportation together, and religion was not the only identity of each citizen. As religious identities developed between competing sects, though, people started to fear/distrust/hate the nonbeliever (the believer in another religious world view). Eventually, they would refuse to sit near a believer from another faith, until eventually they would only sit or stand near those of the same faith. In the end, you could not look at another person without first asking what their religion was. The culture fell apart on these faultlines. I also strongly disagree with the minority/majority talk about religion. It is neither accurate numerically nor is it indicative of how accommodations/exemptions occur. There is no majority religion in the US. Presbyterians are not Baptists are not Methodists, so Protestants is an artificial catch-all. The RCC is the largest religion but it does not have a majority of Americans within it. Exemptions are obtained by politically savvy/connected lobbyists for various religious entities and almost never reflect a majoritarian view. Christian Scientists have obtained exemptions from medical neglect statutes because they can work the system, not because their views reflect any majority anywhere. The Native American Church has been able to obtain exemptions for peyote use in virtually every state requested and they are not a majority in any sense. The key is the ability to work the political system to one's advantage, NOT how many there are of any one denomination. Marci 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 theirreligious practices is by living in a community in which there are enough members of their faith to exercise significant political power. Religious accommodations allow people of different faiths to live together in religiously heterogeneous, integrated communities. The rejection of accommodationsnot only forces people to find another line of work. It persuades them that they need to find another place to live. That’s Balkanization. Alan Marci A. Hamilton Paul R. Verkuil Chair in Public Law Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law Yeshiva University 55 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10003 (212) 790-0215 hamilto...@aol.com -Original Message- From: Alan Brownstein aebrownst...@ucdavis.edu To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu Sent: Tue, Mar 6, 2012 7:10 pm Subject: RE: Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden? 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. Religious accommodations allow people of different faiths to live together in religiously heterogeneous, integrated communities. The rejection of accommodations not only forces people to find another line of work. It persuades them that they need to find another place to live. That’s Balkanization. Alan From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu]On Behalf Of Marci Hamilton Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 2:59 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 ___ 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
Requirement that cabbies transport alcohol = tiny burden?
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 Somalis, and many of them are Muslims (by which the story likely means observant Muslims). But my guess is that no more than a third or so will likely have this objection, and that most will take whatever fares they want. This might be why the Minneapolis Metropolitan Airports Commission was indeed planning to institute a color-coded light scheme (see the story linked to above); it would be interesting to see if this was tried and what the results were. I realize that it's speculation both ways, but, especially given that Minnesota courts take a Sherbert/Yoder view of the state religious freedom provision, I would think that the burden would be on the government to try something and show it fails. On the other hand, I'm not sure how one can get to the conclusion that this is a tiny burden on the cabbies. Apparently the cabbies believe their religion bars them from transporting alcohol; that may seem unreasonable to us, but our judgment about reasonableness shouldn't matter for substantial burden purposes. And if the claim is that the burden is tiny because they can just get a different job, I just don't see how this can be so, especially given cases such as Sherbert: For many unskilled immigrants, there are very well-paying jobs out there, especially in this economy. Perhaps the burden might be justified, but how can we really say that it's tiny? Eugene From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Steven Jamar Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 10:14 AM To: Law Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: Israeli Postal Workers Object to Delivering New Testaments 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 -- where would the sign be displayed? When would the discussion take place? How? Tiny burden on those cabbies, it seems to me. And if they can't abide by the rules, get a different job. Public accommodations and public services just should not allow that sort of accommodation when the service is being denied to others -- it is burdening others based on difference of religion -- for the provision of a public service. Many accommodations that might seem easy from the outside turn out not to be so easy. Of course some accommodations are in fact quite easy and not as burdensome as some people (often employers) think they will be. In practical areas one should not be quite confident in the ease of applying a seemingly principled disctinction. Steve ___ 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.
