Government exists to serve the people. People don’t exist to serve the government. If religion is important to people then the government needs to respect religion.
Free exercise rights are also important to preventing the establishment of religion by the state.
What the US looks like in the absence of free exercise rights (statutory and otherwise) is probably a more Christian place. France, in theory, has a system of strong non-establishment principles (laicite) and weak free exercise principles (no strong protections against legislation that infringes on religious practice). In practice, what you get is discriminatory laws against unfavored minorities while Catholics and other Christians practice how they’d like.
Additionally, in the absence of free exercise rights, there is much more pressure on government to make laws with religion in mind. If there is no legal right to, say, slaughter animals in accordance with kosher practices, then there will be much more lobbying against animal welfare practices that apply industry-wide.
I thought the RFRA was an application of the First Amendment?
Says so right in the law:
In most of the US, the law does allow a business to refuse to cater a gay wedding. There are a few states and municipalities that have extended the same non-discrimination ideas in the Civil Rights Act to sexual orientation, but the vast majority of the US doesn’t have that.
It is worth noting that its original intent was not a bad one.
The law was formulated in the wake of the Supreme Court decision Employment Division v. Smith. In that case the state denied unemployment benefits to some American Indians who had used peyote. Their use of peyote was as part of a religious ceremony which pre-dates the United States and its laws by a long time.
The RFRA was meant to redress instances such as that.
Of course we have now seen it hijacked by the religious right and it has become an odious thing in the hands of some state lawmakers.
Not a problem for any sleddites.
Yes, and no.
The “yes,” part is that earlier Supreme Court decisions, predating Employment Division v. Smith did indeed give greater weight to personal religious practice.
The “No,” part is that in Employment Division, the Supreme Court curtailed that view of the First Amendment’s protections and decided that a law of general applicability doesn’t need to pass special muster when it incidentally burdens religious practice.
The RFRA was passed to restore the earlier practice.
So now, it’s not the First Amendment – it’s the RFRA. The RFRA is based on a prior, now-overruled vision of First Amendment protection.
If the government says to do one thing, and God says to do something else, most people are probably going to do what they believe God wants them to do.
If appeasing that belief is easier and serves the common good better than provoking mass civil unrest, then it’s in the government’s best interest to do so.
Maybe you can give me a quick constitutional law lesson.
How can the RFRA trump the First Amendment?
I mean, so what if congress passed the RFRA. The SCOTUS says the First Amendment is applied as was decided in Employment Division v. Smith. It is not the place of congress to tell the judiciary what laws should be applied or what decisions should be reached.
The RFRA sounds worthless on the face of it.
What am I missing?
And how does that work when more than one “god” is supposedly giving conflicting directions?
As others have noted, this was precisely the motivation for the enactment of the RFRA. A Native American tribe insisted that its religion required them to take peyote in certain ceremonies. Oregon found out that a couple of tribe members had been using peyote and cut off their unemployment benefits. They sued under the First Amendment, saying that even though the peyote law was a prohibition applied to the general public, the state was impermissibly burdening their religion by essentially forcing them to choose between their religious practice and their participation in critical elements of public life.
Justice Scalia wrote for the Court and took BPC’s position, that the Free Exercise Clause of the 1st Am. did not protect them from the applicability of a general prohibition. This decision was widely viewed by many as an outrage, which led Congress to enact the RFRA. The law was championed from the left, introduced in the House by Chuck Schumer and in the Senate by Teddy Kennedy, but it was passed almost unanimously.
It does not overrule the 1st Am. It is simply Congress restricting its own lawmaking powers so as to create protection beyond the 1st Am.
As others have also noted, it was popular on the left when the causes invoked were favorable to the left. Now, of course, it popular on the right because it serves interests favored by the right.
You’re missing the concept that Congress can always provide more protections than the First Amendment does… it is only forestalled if it tries to provide less.
Congress says, in effect, “No federal law can burden religious practice, unless it’s narrowly tailored.” That’s a limit Congress is placing on itself. In fact, Congress tried to place those limits on the states as well, and the Supreme Court slapped them down, ruling that while Congress was free to place restrictions on itself, it couldn’t restrict the states… and that’s why states began passing state versions of the RFRA.
Congress is free to repeal the RFRA if it doesn’t want the burdens, and it’s free to pass any individual law that says, “This specific law is a special case where the RFRA doesn’t apply.”
But since they haven’t, the judiciary is required to apply ALL federal law – both the RFRA and, say, the ACA, must be read together, giving full effect to each if possible, and if not applying the normal rules to resolve conflicts between laws.
It’s exactly the place of Congress. The RFRA doesn’t directly contract the First Amendment, it merely sets into place the standard of review for First Amendment claims based on challenges to federal laws (state laws were also originally included, but SCOTUS said nope to that).
The Supreme Court, FWIW, verified the legitamacy of the RFRA in a unanimous decision of Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal:
Uh… or, what Bricker said…
Your mistake is that there need be justification for a law at all. There doesn’t - only a sufficient number of votes.
BPC seems to be going further than that, and decrying the concept of the First Amendment’s free-exercise rights, but I’ll wait for clarification from him on that point.
I would like to note that I am an atheist, with no particular fondness for religion. However, as a religious minority, I recognize that my best chance at being left alone is for the law to protect religious minorities, which means protecting religious practice. If there were no such protections, the result wouldn’t be a secular wonderland, but instead a Christian state.
If I recall correctly, the RFRA was passed because people were outraged by various Native American medicine men sentenced to hard time in prison for taking peyote. As far as I know, discrimination against protected classes is still not allowed under this law. I don’t really agree with the Hobby Lobby decision, but aside from that aspect, the law seems to be agreeable to me on the whole.
How many people believe they’re getting directions from more than one god? I already answered the question above.
The thing about this (and similar points made by other posters) is that it suggests that if atheists ever became a majority, their attitudes about religious freedom might change.
No. I’m talking about two(or more) groups of people following different “gods”.