Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Academic Blogs -> Less than the Least

OR PHONE (866) 635-1838 for Bankruptcy Help, (866) 635-6190 for Divorce,
(866) 635-2689 for Personal Injury or (866) 635-9402 for Criminal Defense

Find a Local Lawyer

Bankruptcy (866) 635-1838
Divorce (866) 635-6190
Personal Injury (866) 635-2689
Criminal Defense (866) 635-9402

Academic

: Less than the Least

Religious Exemptions--Skeel

By David Skeel and Bill Stuntz

ADVERTISEMENTS

At a law and religion conference at Seton Hall's law school yesterday, Rob Vischer, a law professor at St. Thomas, gave a fascinating talk that touched on the debate over religious exemptions—the question whether religiously oriented individuals and businesses should be protected from discrimination claims. This issue arose when a photo shop was sued for refusing to provide photography services at a gay wedding, and in cases challenging pharmacists' refusal to dispense birth control or abortion pills. Vischer argues that the cases should focus less on the parties' competing claims of conscience than on whether the declinations genuinely interfere with the plaintiffs' access to these services (in many of these cases, they don't). Among other things, such a shift might better protect the ability of businesses and other associations to govern themselves as they see fit.

An obvious question with this approach is whether it would also have justified the refusal to serve blacks that characterized the Jim Crow era. Vischer acknowledged this concern, but argued that Jim Crow race practices shouldn't be our template for thinking about the current issues. The harms in that era were much more systematic and severe than the harms claimed in the recent cases.

I don't often think in terms of the consequences of social sin. But it seems to me that the way in which our country's experience with slavery has complicated the debates on so many other issues—and has invited absolutist claims about what equality requires—is part of God's punishment on our country for the sin of slavery. Had it not been for slavery and the ongoing legacy of racial discrimination, the national discussion of these other issues surely would have looked quite different.

Full post as published by Less than the Least on November 13, 2009 (boomark / email).