Published in NH Bar News (4/21/2021) In the past several years a number of religious accommodation cases have reached the U.S. Supreme Court, an interesting trend where the religious beliefs and rights of individuals and businesses conflict with other fundamental rights of employees, students, and even the public. The cases have received tremendous publicity and have stirred rancorous debate in classrooms, bar rooms, and on talk radio. The social media soundbites, however, sometimes miss the subtle and not-so-subtle legal arguments along this collision course. In 2014, the Supreme Court decided the case of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 US 682 (2014) ruling that Hobby Lobby’s owners’ religious beliefs trumped their employees’ rights to health insurance coverage for contraception as required by the Affordable Care Act. The Court ruled 5-4 that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 allowed the for-profit company to deny this coverage to its employees. This was followed by Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 US ___ (2018), a 7-2 decision which permitted a bakery owner to refuse to bake a cake for a gay couple’s wedding. However, rather than deciding whether free exercise or free speech rights are violated by […]
