Fox News et al go after Obama on religious liberty case, here is the truth

[usregimechange]

Fox News: Supreme Court delivers a knockout punch to the White House

Wednesday the United States Supreme Court delivered a knockout blow to the White House in the cause of religious liberty...

The fired minister -- who also taught secular subjects -- claimed discrimination in employment. The Obama administration, always looking for opportunities to undermine the bedrock of First Amendment religious liberty, eagerly agreed.

There was just one big problem standing in the way of the government's plan: the U.S. Constitution. For a long time American courts have recognized the existence of a "ministerial exemption" which keeps government’s hands off the employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministers or clergy.

Here, in this case, the Department of Justice had the nerve to not only challenge the exemption’s application but also its very existence.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/01/11/supreme-court-delivers-knockout-punch-to-white-house/#ixzz1jDHOIsbJ


What the Obama admin did argue:

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT
1.
The ADA, by its plain terms, forbids employers—including religious employers like petitioner— from retaliating against their employees for complaining about or reporting discrimination. The history of the ADA confirms that Congress made a conscious choice to include religious employers within its scope. Although it provided certain defenses for religion-based discrimination in employment, Congress has provided no comparable defense for a religious entity that retaliates against its employees for invoking their rights under the statute.

2.
The only question presented in this case is therefore whether the ADA’s anti-retaliation provision is unconstitutional as applied to a religious employer that fires an employee—here, a teacher of secular subjects in a parochial school who also performed religious functions—for asserting her rights under the ADA. The answer to that question is no. Petitioner asserts that a categorical “ministerial exception” to enforcement of the civil rights laws bars the ADA claim at issue in this case. But none of the three constitutional provisions upon which petitioner relies to support its categorical claim of immunity stands as a bar to adjudication of this case.

a. In Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), this Court held that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment does not provide a defense to those who violate neutral and generally applicable laws, even when their actions are based on religious belief. See id. at 877-878. The ADA is just such a law. It neutrally prohibits both discrimination in employment against those with disabilities and retaliation against those who seek to vindicate their rights. It does not single out for disfavorable treatment any religious organization, activity, or belief. Accordingly, the Free Exercise Clause provides petitioner with no defense to an ADA claim for unlawful retaliation.

http://www.justice.gov/osg/briefs/2011/3mer/2mer/2010-0553.mer.aa.pdf


So Fox News insinuates that the Administration wanted to do away with the ability of religious institutions to hire and fire individuals and thus control the religious message/direction of those religious institutions. Basically that they wanted to end religious freedom for churches. That is not what they argued. They said that Churches, etc have such a right but that in this case since the person was not fired for her views but that she was fired for her disability and for retaliating against her after she began to assert her rights under ADA.

SCOTUS basically said that religious institutions can hire and fire people for whatever reason they want including for disability or the assertion of such rights.

[usregimechange]

1. They are speading this BS like wildfire.