That’s why it depends on specifics. If you’re thinking of this case https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/10/23/240000-jury-award-to-muslim-truck-drivers-who-were-fired-for-refusing-to-transport-alcohol/?utm_term=.afc40058cbd7&noredirect=on , the company conceded that they could easily have allowed the drivers to swap loads with other drivers. The case would have gone differently if they worked for a company where nearly every truckload contained alcohol.
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I wasn’t talking about the government in that post - it was about whether employers (including the government) can require employees to violate their religious beliefs. But you’re right , rules or laws targeting religious people or a particular religion are a different issue , whether imposed by the government or an employer.
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Thanks. But the school could easily allow the teacher to just call the kids by their last names. But in any event, this is straying from the topic, but thanks for the replies.
I suspect that there are many in America right now that do not agree with that statement.
Homosexual is not a protected class under federal law.
We are not talking about federal law, we are talking about this case, that happened in Colorado, where sexual orientation is a protected class.
But, you are correct that in most states, it is not. Did you actually have a point or a follow-up to your statement at all? Did your unnecessary and mostly incorrect nitpicking in any way invalidate the point that I made?
Hey, did you know that in Somalia, sexual orientation isn’t a protected class? That has as much relevance to the thread as your post.
Oh, and nitpick to your nitpick, since you seem to have a need to make sure that everything is pedantically correct to your satisfaction, female or black also are not protected classes under federal law.
For instance, I run a dog grooming establishment. If I remember correctly, some muslims have a religious objection to interacting with dogs. It would not make an sense to force me to hire someone who cannot deal with my business model.
But, I wouldn’t be not hiring them because they are muslim, I would not be hiring them because when I ask the question, “This job entails dogs, dog hair, and water. Will any of these factors be problematic?” they say yes.
I’ve brought this up before, but I think it bears repeating: The baker’s main argument was a free-speech argument. He argued that requiring him to bake a custom cake for a same-sex wedding constituted unconstitutional compelled speech. In this case, the reason he refused to do so was grounded in his religious views, but that’s only incidental to the argument. If he were opposed to baking wedding cakes for same-sex weddings for reasons other than religion, I think we’d have essentially the same case.
Of course, the Court’s ruling didn’t address that and ruled based on the issue of religious bias of the human rights commission, but that’s not getting to the core of the issue.
Gender and Race are protected classes. Homosexuality is not. And Colorado, nor any other state, may treat people differently based on religion.
Sexual orientation is a protected class in Colorado. And I think you’re conflating discrimination by the government, which directly implicates constitutional concerns, with public accommodation laws, which are legislative acts.
And legislative acts may not impede on the Free Exercise Clause lacking a compelling governmental reason. That’s what the Colorado commission apparently doesn’t get, and why the ruling was against them.
That’s not why the ruling went against them. It went against them, at least temporarily, because of a Due Process issue. We don’t know how it would have turned out had that issue not arisen.
It didn’t really arise as such, it was apparently grabbed onto as an excuse to punt.
We’ve seen the demonstrable harm of allowing unchecked discrimination in public accommodations: Jim Crow, sundown towns, and the like. Things aren’t that bad for gay people right now, but the idea that we can’t legislate against a demonstrable harm until it’s already happened is absurd. It’s like arguing that it should only be made illegal to dump arsenic into a public reservoir after its poisoned someone.
Well, yes and no. But I’d characterize it as: The Colorado Commission threw some wild balls and walked the batter. Not a base hit, and the pitcher was at fault.
I don’t believe they ruled based on the 14th Amendment, but on the First. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
It was not the “legislative act” that was the crux of the ruling, but the application of the act by the Commission. The “legislative act” remains intact, and it was a narrow ruling aimed at the process of implementing the act in this specific instance only. Kennedy noted:
Homosexuality isn’t even a class. But, sexual orientation is a protected class in Colorado. Whatever it is that you are trying to nitpick and correct here, you are failing.
It is not that they are treating them differently based on religion, it is that the bigots are wanting to treat people differently based on the claims they make about their religion.
Or, is it your contention that people may treat protected classes differently because they believe that their god wants them to?
Apparently it wasn’t enacted yet at the time, but the fact that it now is would seem to make this whole turkey of a case moot.
IMO he’s succeeding at something.