RE: StateRFRAandnonreligiousgroupsthathaveconscientiousobjections toantidiscriminationlaws

Pardon the length and density (and resulting lack of clarity) in the following paragraphs. I'm sorry that I don't have time now to flesh out these points. Autonomy in choice of clergy, and in manner of choosing clergy, is understood and has been understood since the Founding to be constitutive of

RE: Denial of tax exemptions to groups that discriminate based on sex

I had not received this post by Eugene about the Bob Jones case when I sent in my long post on this issue (even though his post is time-stamped 50 minutes before mine). I hope, nevertheless, that my long post provides sufficient grounds to distinguish Bob Jones. Clergy issues are sui generis,

RE: StateRFRAandnonreligiousgroupsthathaveconscientiousobjections toantidiscriminationlaws

I can only add one small point to Mark's excellent post. The basic idea behind employment discrimination laws is that the protected characteristic (e.g. gender) is not a relevant qualification for employment. Thus, there is no lawyer gender, or contruction worker gender, orpoliceman gender.

Boy Scouts, Expressive Association, Government Benefits, Religious Discrimination, Etc.

Life Imitates Listservs: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/supreme/SF030906.PDF In three hours (1:00 Eastern; 10:00 Pacific), the California Supreme Courtwill announce its ruling in Evans v. City of Berkeley, which presents the question "Did the City of Berkeley violate the free speech or

RE: Boy Scouts, Expressive Association, Government Benefits, Religious Discrimination, Etc.

Professor Lederman has brought up these cases where a religious organization (usually the Boy Scouts) is given preferential access to a government forum or other government benefit -- Evans, Winkler, Barnes-Wallace, etc. And I think most will agree that the government cannot generally prefer

Re: FW from Michael Besso: State Official Religious Conviction Controversy in Connecticut

Hmmm. Surely even a "victim's advocate" can reasonably believe that victim's rights do not require Catholic hospitals to provide abortion pills to rape victims, pills that arereadily and widelyavailable outside of Catholic hospitals in Connecticut.Here is an excerpt from the article:In his

Re: Boy Scouts, Expressive Association, Government Benefits, Religious Discrimination, Etc.

Thanks, Christopher, for that thoughtful response. 1. The difficult Establishment Clause issue, as I see it, is not whether the BSA(or any other recipient of special benefits) is a "religious organization," or "is religious," but instead whether the organization excludes persons of some

Re: Boy Scouts, Expressive Association, Government Benefits, Religious Discrimination, Etc.

Here's the opinion, unanimously rejecting the BSA-affiliated group's constitutional claims: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S112621.PDF It turns out this does raise exactly Eugene's question -- All nonprofit community services organizations get free berths at the marina if

RE: Boy Scouts, Expressive Association, Government Benefits, Religious Discrimination, Etc.

I think there are constitutional problems with government providing religious organizations preferential access to government benefits -- even when the religious organization qualifies under some secular criteria. For example, what if the religious group that receives the benefit discriminates

Re: Boy Scouts, Expressive Association, Government Benefits, Religious Discrimination, Etc.

Let me take the second point first, I agree that determining whether a religious group was given benefits because of their religiosity or because of some secular criteria will often be impossible. You have to look at what the legislature would have given to the religious groups had they

RE: StateRFRAandnonreligiousgroupsthathaveconscientiousobjectionstoantidiscriminationlaws

My point is that there are some relationships that have a kind of intimacy that the government ought to leave alone. I think that the Religion Clauses compel the government to leave the intimate relation between clergy and religious institutions alone. The broader, and obvious, point is that

RE: State RFRA and nonreligious groups that have conscientious objections to antidiscrimination laws

The desire to prevent discrimination based on irrelevant attributes is surely one theory behind employment discrimination laws. But the legislature (and the courts interpreting the legislature's work) may also -- and often does -- prohibit discrimination when it is relevant. Manhart is an

RE: State RFRA and nonreligious groups that have conscientiousobjections to antidiscrimination laws

I am still unpersuaded. I don't see the relevance of your examples. You see no difference between the relation between clergy and religious organizations and other employment relations? We are talking about religions here. The Religion Clauses have to mean at least that we recognize -- for

RE: Boy Scouts, Expressive Association, Government Benefits, Religious Discrimination, Etc.

This is all going to end up mimicking the charitable-choice debates. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about special or general benefits being distributed. As long as the criteria for distribution are secular, then these are really the same questions. (Because, in either case, all

Re: Boy Scouts, Expressive Association, Government Benefits, Religious Discrimination, Etc.

Thanks again for the thoughtful response, Christopher. A few quick reactions: 1. It's not only about equality, because virtually none of these programs treats all applicants "equally": Some are favored over others for a variety of subjective reasons. And the EC question therefore is

RE: Boy Scouts, Expressive Association, Government Benefits, Religious Discrimination, Etc.

Actually, I didn't think your example necessarily invoked the charitable choice debate. Your example, giving a tax break to the largest employer in town, is different than charitable choice programs because its purpose (I assume) is to provide jobs to people in the community. This is a case