Poor play, my friend.
You asked, and I quote, “How can a “non-state actor” have as much of a deleterious effects as the state on religious liberty?”
He answered that question. He didn’t answer the question of how non-state actors could violate the first amendment. So your response to him is a total non sequitur made possible only by your asking one question and then telling him he didn’t answer a different question.
Yes they did. Here are the exact quotes:
Please do.
TEXTUALLY, yes, Case law, no!
Yes they are.
Not necessarily always true concerning freedom of speech.
To be clear, we’re talking about a group such as the Little Sisters of the Poor that’s entirely non-governmental, not about some group such as a quasi-public hospital or university or art museum. Are you claiming that in case law, an entirely non-governmental group has ever been found to be in violation of the First Amendment? If so, I’d love to see the case in question?
Some entities are restricted, and violated the 1st, compare Alabama v Marsh for one!
Yes, I agree with ITR on this one. I do feel it’s an Establishment Clause issue.
Some clarification would help:
Bob’s Church of Jesus and Chicken opens up a church right next to Church’s Chicken. They offer pieces of fried chicken during communion, right after passing the collection plate.
Church’s chicken must pay property tax. Bob’s Church of Chicken doesn’t have to pay property tax.
Is it your claim that:
You agree with him that mandatory military service exemptions violate the Establishment Clause?
Define “that.” 
The claims you were making, duh.
“Duh” seems appropriate here. Here are the claims I made:
Do you disagree with this?
But corporations have, as usual bought out the government and the regulators,
Do you disagree with this?
and nowadays any profitable work stays in private hands pretty much forever, between trademark and copyright.
Do you disagree with this?
It’s gone from a law designed to benefit artists and the public to one that benefits artists and large corporations, and public not at all.
Do you disagree with this?
I’m hardly an expert in constitutional law. I took one class in college 10 years ago. I’m sure a few hours reading from wikipedia’s List of Landmark Court Decisions in the US would allow anyone to walk rings around my knowledge. But I also don’t go around making foolish claims about what the framers had in mind when they wrote certain words, or that the First Amendment only limits the actions of congress.
Perhaps you should take this chance to educate yourself?
I don’t think they’re correct, though I’m now well out of my depth here. I think the reason that they’re not correct is that there are exceptions available to anyone with a sufficient claim against them. Yes, the Amish are exempted from Social Security on religious grounds, but railroad workers are also exempted (on some other grounds). Yes, the Quakers get an exemption from military service, but so does anyone else with sufficient moral grounds. There’s no establishment of religion because it’s not favoring certain religions.
Let’s go back to the original complaint. The nuns do not wish to provide contraception because they claim it is against their religious beliefs. The government says ok, we have an exemption for that, all you have to do is fill out this form that states that it’s against your beliefs, and no problem. And the nuns apparently refuse to do even that.
In this case, anyone who wants to make the claim that their religion offers an exemption to this law can make that claim. All they have to do is fill out the form so the bureaucracy has it on file. It’s hard to see what the nuns are doing as anything other than obstinacy because they don’t like the idea that others are prompted to provide contraceptive coverage.
I now return you to your thread in progress, which has apparently become about copyright, because why have an argument on the internet if it’s not going to be about copyright, I suppose.
Assuming you’re required to put something in the collection plate in order to get some chicken, I think the government would say that Bob is running a business rather than a non-profit organization. Non-profit organizations (both religious and non-religious) have tax breaks. Businesses do not.
Nope–I would’ve put that if that’s what I meant. Addressing the hypothetical as given, can you explain?
IOW, there are of course plenty of cases in which churches are treated differently from businesses. Do you contend that
Haven’t read the whole thread yet but I’m going to respond directly to the OP I guess since I was quoted. Here’s my understanding of the situation and what you, ITR, got wrong:
It is not true that only the government can be in violation of the 1st Amendment. But its not as simple as saying a private institution making up rules that infringe upon something like free speech is impossible. A specific law’s life, for lack of a better term, is made up of several parts: those who make the law, those who enforce it, and those who violate it.
Only the government can make laws. Thus, they are mandated to make laws that do not go against the 1st Amendment. Private organizations can make rules, but they are not legally enforceable by the police.
Those who enforce the law falls into two camps. One, there’s the law enforcement officers like police or military that uphold a standard, or judges and lawyers that interpret and hear cases. Or two, there are private organizations that sue on behalf of the third group below. Organizations such as the ACLU may not do any particular enforcing, but through lawsuits, they bring about enforcement by punishing those who do wrong with legal cases.
Then there’s the third group, actual people or organizations who violate or are somehow impacted by the 1st Amendment. This can be anybody, though strict interpretation of whether they were violated or impacted falls sometimes to the 2nd group above. This can be private organizations who feel they are silenced by the government, employees who feel they are silenced by employers, or individuals who have grievances on how the government enforces the law or how it was written.
I said:
In this case, the nuns are acting as the 2nd group, enforcing a radical interpretation of the 1st Amendment on others who are not nuns. They are part of the 2nd group but here’s where you got suckered, they want everyone to think they are the 3rd group, the aggrieved. The nuns claim their rights are being violated therefore they bring a lawsuit against the government. What they are actually doing is trying to enforce upon other people their own interpretation of the law.
It is unfortunate (yes, I said UNfortunate) that in this country, we hold up religious expression seemingly to be the highest of the 1st Amendment rights. Realistically, we know that often rights conflicts. My right to swing my fist vs. your right to place your nose in its path. Your problem, then, ITR, is that you childishly think that religious rights should always triumph, or rather, Christian religious rights. And, when a non-Christian group wins a case following a violation, you interpret that win as a zero sum game, that the Christian must have lost rights for the other group to have gained it. Therefore, you see each loss as a violation of Christian rights, when instead you should be more broadly interpreting it as a win for religious or free expression rights (hint: not all religious-based grievances are religious in nature, some can be free expression conflicting with religious preferences). You won’t, of course, because we all know your agenda, but you should see it my way
So that goes back to the nuns. They felt that a law made by the Obama Administration violated their rights, claiming to be the aggrieved. However, since it was specifically written to not take into account anything that isn’t already done, with a paltry requirement of signing a form saying they don’t want to provide birth control, the nuns are not really basing their objection on religion. To be perfectly honest, the whole thing is about a form. But that form would allow their employees the freedom to move away from the nuns’ health care to some other 3rd party which would provide contraceptives. But let’s not beat around the bush here, the nuns want to control their employees no matter if they are working for them or not. That’s the real issue. Therefore, I stand by my statement that they are 100% absolutely wrong.
By trying to create laws for people not under their purview, they are acting as both group 1 and group 2. They are no longer the aggrieved, they are trying to make laws and enforce them. Plus, this lawsuit pits two types of freedoms against each other, the nuns’ right to interpret their own religious institution versus the employee’s right to go to a non-religious health care organization to get contraceptives. Those nuns are fucking assholes and you are woefully wrong to think that this is a clear cut 1st Amendment case
In my defense, you weren’t clear on that point.
If Bob’s Church is handing out chicken to people without requiring them to pay then it’s a charity organization and it’s entitled to the same treatment that other charity organizations receive. And it can ask people to make donations to continue its operations as other charity donations do.
Really? Did I ever say that? If so, would you please link to the post in which I did?
Could you please provide a cite to back up your claim that the form in question “would allow their employees the freedom to move away from the nuns’ health care to some other 3rd party which would provide contraceptives”? You made the exact same claim in the original thread about the Little Sisters case, and when I challenged you to provide a cite, you failed to do so. I presume you wouldn’t make the same claim only to repeat the same humiliation once again, so you surely must have cite this time.
And I challenge you to provide a cite for this claim as well.
Really? What’s the name of the law that the Little Sisters are trying to create?
Supposing that the Little Sisters win, what stops any of their employees from going to a non-religious health care organization to get contraceptives?
Do you have any reason to believe that any employee of the Little Sisters of the Poor is the least bit unhappy with the health insurance coverage that they currently have? (I asked you this in the other thread and you didn’t answer.)
You can say that about “freedom of speech,” but not the First Amendment. The First Amendment is a part of the constitution, not a concept. It is a legal document and means what it says.
That’s…not what you asked me, though. You asked, “How can non-state actors violate religious liberty?” not “How can non-state actors violate the First Amendment?”
It is an attempt to enshrine a conceptual principle, in a highly specific context; the rational and correct thing to do, then, is to focus on that principle rather than how it was thought to apply in a late eighteenth-century intellectual context that has since been superseded in many of its specifics.