Linda Greenhouse’s online column yesterday bears the portentous title “The Supreme Court Nears the Moment of Truth on Religion.” Greenhouse warns ominously “about the growing threat that an increasingly weaponized free-exercise clause poses to civil society, along with the statutes meant to extend its reach.” If a “moment of truth” is approaching, the distortions that pervade Greenhouse’s piece won’t help to discern it. And it is the hostility to religious liberty that she manifests that poses the real threat to civil society. Let’s run through some particulars: 1. Greenhouse opens by expressing her alarm at a recent Sixth Circuit opinion that involved a claim by Michigan prisoners that the state violated their religious-liberty rights under the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. The prisoners claim to belong to the “Christian Identity” religion, which advocates white separatism. They sought the right to engage in group worship and baptism. The district court ruled against them on the ground that the state’s denial of their request “did not substantially burden [their] exercise of their religion under the second of the three-step analysis for evaluating RLUIPA claims.” The Sixth Circuit panel ruled that the district court erred in ruling against the […]
