I find it interesting to watch the really hard Supreme Court
cases, especially those in which two fundamental rights are in conflict. In
recent years the conflict between anti-discrimination and religious beliefs has
posed some really interesting and challenging problems, of which the Hobby Lobby case (can an employer be
forced to offer birth control coverage to workers if they have religious
objections to birth control?) and the Masterpiece
Cake case (can an artist, a cake decorator, be forced to provide a same-sex-themed
wedding cake if they have religious objections to same-sex marriage?) are
examples. In both cases, the right not to be discriminated against is in opposition
to the right to practice one’s religious beliefs, making really difficult and
interesting case law.
Naturally conservatives and liberals complain reliably if
the decision doesn’t go the way they want it to. Conservatives worried that the
Supreme Court was too liberal and discriminated against religious beliefs,
while liberals complain that the court is now too conservative and gives too
much weight to religious beliefs. In fact I think the justices tend to work
hard to find acceptable compromises in these difficult conflicts of interests.
In this regard, for those who
might be interested in this, there is a good article this morning on the Vox
site entitledThe fight over whether religion is a license to discriminate
is back before the Supreme Court . Of course the title is biased toward
the liberal view, since Vox is a liberal site, but the article does a very good
job of detailing the history of such cases, and the logic behind the rulings.
Scalia (a conservative, at that) made a good point when he
observed in a ruling "To make an individual’s obligation to obey such a law contingent upon
the law’s coincidence with his religious beliefs, except where the State’s
interest is ‘compelling, is permitting him, by virtue of his beliefs, ‘to
become a law unto himself.’”. On the other hand, the Constitution attempts to protect
every individual’s right to follow their religious beliefs. At the moment the
issue is around discrimination against LGTBQ+ people, but the issue will probably
eventually also grow up around some Muslim religious practices as well, where Sharia law comes
in conflict with Anglo-Saxon common law
.
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