SCOTUS Catch-all

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nycfan said:

Supreme Court seems likely to let religious families opt out of LGBTQ storybooks​

The lawsuit over public school story time with titles like “Uncle Bobby’s Wedding” and “Love, Violet” is one of three major religious-rights cases on the high court’s docket.


“… At issue for the justices is whether public schools in Montgomery County, Maryland, illegally burden the First Amendment rights of parents to freely exercise their religion when children are required to participate in discussions that touch on gender and sexuality that conflict with their faith. The case, which has implications for public schools nationwide, involves the type of diversity and inclusion efforts the Trump administration has targeted on college campuses and in K-12 districts, as well as in government and private businesses.

… During more than two and a half hours of argument on Tuesday, several justices read aloud from the text of the disputed storybooks, some of which referred to drag queens and same-sex marriage.

Conservative justices repeatedly pressed the lawyer for the Maryland school system on why it could not easily accommodate the religious parents and allow their children to opt out of objectionable curriculum.

“What’s the big deal about allowing them to opt out?” asked Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

“I’m not understanding why it’s not feasible,” added Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who said he was “mystified” by the school board’s actions in the Maryland county where he grew up and still lives.

… Montgomery County expanded its English Language Arts curriculum in 2022 to include books with LGBTQ+ characters to better reflect the diversity of families in its religiously diverse and politically liberal population. The elementary school books included stories about a girl who finds that her favorite uncle’s marriage means she’s gaining another uncle, not losing one. Another tells the story of a young girl who has a crush on her female classmate.

Only two of the court’s liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson — seemed to embrace the school system’s claim that allowing opt-outs would be unworkable for school officials and potentially lead to troubling outcomes.

… The parents behind the lawsuit say they are not trying to change the lesson plans or remove any books from classroom shelves. They just want to have the option of saying their children will not participate. …”

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Unsurprising. I have sympathy for parent wanting say in what their kids learn in school.

The reality is that having kids opt out of a lesson means having to have alternative oversight for those kids while the lesson is taught. In schools stretched thin, that is a bigger hassle than the justices blithely suggest, so the likely outcome I that such lessons will be limited or avoided for largely logistical reasons. And s Kagan noted, depending on how broadly the opinion is written, we could end up with parents demanding opt out rights for everything, effectively requiring cafeteria plan lessons.

But the direction here I obviously and the issue will be how tightly they circumscribe the opt-out rights as a First Amendment matter.
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That’s the weird thing about this case to me: the First Amendment (specifically as it relates to religious freedom) angle. The topics are secular. And on a related note, what if a work of literature focuses on a Christian family and goes into detail about their religious practices and beliefs? Or what if a work of literature uses symbolism derived from Christian beliefs/stories, as much literature does? Can non-Christian parents opt their kids out?
 
Icky Mettle said:
Or what if a work of literature uses symbolism derived from Christian beliefs/stories, as much literature does? Can non-Christian parents opt their kids out?
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This is the question that the religious liberty types cannot answer, or at least not in any satisfying way.

They simultaneously want a) the courts to take religious liberty plaintiffs at their word -- i.e. give them a strong presumption of sincerity that is probably impossible to defeat without the plaintiff fucking up; and b) give religious liberty plaintiffs the ability to avoid generally applicable laws unless the state can satisfy strict scrutiny.

The obvious result is a slow-motion degradation of our systems of law. The religious-exemption industry is just getting going, but I see no reason why it wouldn't spread as soon as its advantages become clear -- which might happen if there's a big celebrity case involving such a thing.

It's never been really clear to me what's wrong with the standard laid out in Employment Division v Smith -- i.e. incidental burdens on free exercise that emerge from generally applicable laws (with no discriminatory intent) are not of constitutional significance. The facts of Smith always give liberals pause: the petitioners were Native Americans arrested and convicted for possession of peyote, which they said was used for a religious ritual required by the religion. It combined a War On Drugs mentality with arguable discrimination against Native Americans, and liberals really don't want to rule for the state.

There can be narrowing formulations: maybe the generally applicable laws standard only applies to activities with high propensity for abuse. We basically wouldn't have any drug laws if anyone arrested can say they smoke the ganja 'cause religion. Arguably a narrow exception for peyote doesn't raise this problem, as peyote isn't terribly popular and members of tribes are historically known to use peyote in religion. But that's a far cry from what this court is doing, which is basically to give Christians the option as to whether they want to obey anti-discrimination and public accommodations laws.
 
superrific said:
This is the question that the religious liberty types cannot answer, or at least not in any satisfying way.

They simultaneously want a) the courts to take religious liberty plaintiffs at their word -- i.e. give them a strong presumption of sincerity that is probably impossible to defeat without the plaintiff fucking up; and b) give religious liberty plaintiffs the ability to avoid generally applicable laws unless the state can satisfy strict scrutiny.

The obvious result is a slow-motion degradation of our systems of law. The religious-exemption industry is just getting going, but I see no reason why it wouldn't spread as soon as its advantages become clear -- which might happen if there's a big celebrity case involving such a thing.

It's never been really clear to me what's wrong with the standard laid out in Employment Division v Smith -- i.e. incidental burdens on free exercise that emerge from generally applicable laws (with no discriminatory intent) are not of constitutional significance. The facts of Smith always give liberals pause: the petitioners were Native Americans arrested and convicted for possession of peyote, which they said was used for a religious ritual required by the religion. It combined a War On Drugs mentality with arguable discrimination against Native Americans, and liberals really don't want to rule for the state.

There can be narrowing formulations: maybe the generally applicable laws standard only applies to activities with high propensity for abuse. We basically wouldn't have any drug laws if anyone arrested can say they smoke the ganja 'cause religion. Arguably a narrow exception for peyote doesn't raise this problem, as peyote isn't terribly popular and members of tribes are historically known to use peyote in religion. But that's a far cry from what this court is doing, which is basically to give Christians the option as to whether they want to obey anti-discrimination and public accommodations laws.
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A lot of these cases arise in the context of LGTBQ anti-discrimination laws. That is not surprising because: (1) there is less public support for those laws than, say, race anti-discrimination, and (2) there is more of a historical connection between religion and anti-LGBTQ conduct.

That said, the logic of these cases should apply equally to race. So what is going to happen when a company claims a sincerely-held religious belief not to serve black people?
 
Calheel said:
A lot of these cases arise in the context of LGTBQ anti-discrimination laws. That is not surprising because: (1) there is less public support for those laws than, say, race anti-discrimination, and (2) there is more of a historical connection between religion and anti-LGBTQ conduct.

That said, the logic of these cases should apply equally to race. So what is going to happen when a company claims a sincerely-held religious belief not to serve black people?
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Unmarried women who get pregnant-"religous" taboo
 
superrific said:
Not this type of say. How many of those parents want the Ten Commandments plastered on the walls of schools? Can't opt-out of that.

A proper secular education is always going to conflict with a religious education. The state should be able to provide a secular education to everyone. That's the goal. Parents can supplement with their own lessons on religion should they choose. And so can their church. And they can send their kids to Christian schools if it's so important to them.

But we can't have kids being pulled out of school for important lessons like tolerance and morality.

In general, the idea that parents should control the education of their children is borderline insane. It makes no sense at all. Schools should work like corporations: the parents/stockholders can elect the board, and after the board is elected, the board manages everything.
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If simply hearing about same sex marriage - something real and observable that exists in the US as a right - is an unacceptable affront, why shouldn’t they be permitted to opt out of science and history lessons that offer far greater challenges to their beliefs and are less concrete in their interpretation than the readily observable fact of same sex marriage?
This is a slope slippery with horseshit.
 
nycfan said:
Intriguing voting bloc in dissent in this case …
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The Supreme Court often breaks its party lines on these technical, narrow issues. It's sort of sad that they can exercise independent judgment when it comes to Medicare reimbursements but when it comes to criminal immunity for the president, it's lockstep.
 
Calheel said:
So what is going to happen when a company claims a sincerely-held religious belief not to serve black people?
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I'm not 100%, but I think the court fended off a bunch of that bullshit in the 1960s. That was one of the objections to desegregation.
 
Icky Mettle said:
That’s the weird thing about this case to me: the First Amendment (specifically as it relates to religious freedom) angle. The topics are secular. And on a related note, what if a work of literature focuses on a Christian family and goes into detail about their religious practices and beliefs? Or what if a work of literature uses symbolism derived from Christian beliefs/stories, as much literature does? Can non-Christian parents opt their kids out?
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The absolute best Sunday School teacher I had growing was a local business man who taught that week's lesson from the front page of the Sunday issue of the News&Observer. Sometimes he picked the story and sometimes he let us pick the story. If we were acting-up and wouldn't settle down, then he would threaten to teach the lesson from church issued Sunday School books. He always gave us a warning before passing out the church issued books. Something like, "Settle down or we can do the official lesson." That threat usually got us settled down.
 


“… While several conservative justices expressed support for the school's arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts emerged during the more than two-hour argument as a potentially decisive vote.

There is the possibility of a 4-4 split, as one justice, conservative Amy Coney Barrett, is not participating. That outcome would leave in place an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that blocked the proposed school.

… Conservative justices expressed doubt that charter schools are public schools that are effectively instruments of the state and favored the school's argument that they are entirely private bodies that just happen to receive state funding.

They also expressed concern that it would be a form of religious discrimination under the Free Exercise Clause to bar religious schools from a state charter school program that other entities can participate in. …”
 
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