Religious groups are feeling their oats following their success in the Hobby Lobby case to carve out a religious exemption for themselves from following the law if it conflicts with their religious beliefs. Now comes word that legislators in some states are seeking to expand that practice and allow businesses to not serve gay people if they disapprove of homosexuality on religious grounds.
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Whenever religious people in the US claim some privilege for themselves, unbelievers like us warn them that they would not like it if the tables were turned and minority religions take advantage of those same privileges. It turns out that our friends at the Satanic Temple (the ones who proposed putting up a Satanic statue on the Oklahoma state capital grounds) are the ones taking the lead on this, taking steps to advance their religion using the same legal arguments that Christians have used in achieving their recent victories.
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It is not uncommon for people to take advantage of the immediacy of the internet to issue threats to others, often anonymously but sometimes not. Prominent people routinely receive threats from the general public and this requires a judgment as to when to take them seriously and how best to respond. While vague threats from an anonymous person are troubling enough, concerns tend to rise when the threat comes from a known person who is in a position to actually carry out the action and has a motive for doing so. But what can one do in such a situation?
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ProPublica has a review of a case that is being heard by the US Supreme Court today in which a woman driver for UPS was forced to take seven months unpaid leave, losing her health benefits in the process, because she requested that she not be asked to lift weights greater than 20 lbs during her pregnancy, as advised by her doctor, even though her job description requires her to be able to lift 70 lbs. However her normal duties rarely required her to do so and a colleague had said that he was willing to step in when necessary.
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Religious organizations and individuals, the Catholic church in particular, put Oliver Twist to shame. Their recent string of legal victories against having to provide contraception coverage to their employees has made them even more greedy about claiming privileges. Molly Redden says that the Catholic church now argues that even having to show up in court to fight a lawsuit is a violation of their religions freedom.
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Via Michael Stone I learn that Nome, a town in Alaska facing a serious budget shortfall, is considering a move to eliminate the tax exemption for churches and other non-profits and charities.
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Brianne Gorod, an Appellate Counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, says that those who think (like I do) that the US Supreme Court agreeing to take on the federal subsidies issue is a sign that they are going to disallow it and thus seriously wound Obamacare are being too pessimistic (or too optimistic, if you happen to be an opponent of the health care law).
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The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution tersely says that “Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion”. Over time, this short phrase has had to be fleshed out and this has resulted in a messy stew of decisions resulting in great confusion.
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The US Supreme Court on Friday decided to hear the case King v. Burwell of whether the subsidies provided by the health exchanges set up by the federal government under Obamacare are constitutional. This is ominous. Why?
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Yesterday the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down its verdict on the six same-sex marriage cases from the four states in its jurisdiction (Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee). District judges had in each case ruled that the bans on such marriages in each of those states was unconstitutional and the three-judge panel looked at all the cases together. The panel ruled 2-1 to reverse the lower courts and uphold the bans, meaning that same-sex marriages cannot proceed in these four states. The majority opinion is, frankly, appalling. I do not say this simply because I disagree with the conclusion but for reasons that I give below.
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