Religion
Related: About this forumJustice Scalia’s terrible religious legacy
Mark Silk | Feb 15, 2016
At Saturday nights Republican presidential debate, Ted Cruz claimed that the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had ratcheted up the stakes of the election because, in his words, We are one justice away from a Supreme Court that would undermine the religious liberty of millions of Americans. In fact, however, it was Scalia who did more to undermine religious liberty in America than any Supreme Court justice in history.
He did it by creating, and persuading four fellow justices to sign on to, an entirely new of way of interpreting the First Amendments Free Exercise clause. A quarter-century ago, in the majority opinion in Employment Division v. Smith, he established that the free exercise of religion could not be violated by neutral and generally applicable laws.
Smith involved two drug counsellors who were fired from their jobs because, in violation of a regulation against counsellors using drugs, they ingested peyote as members of the Native American Church. Because the regulation was neutral and generally applicable i.e. it was not directed against a specific religious group or practice they lost their case.
To be sure, Scalia did not claim to be against granting legal exceptions on religious grounds. Values that are protected against government interference through enshrinement in the Bill of Rights are not thereby banished from the political process, he wrote. It is therefore not surprising that a number of States have made an exception to their drug laws for sacramental peyote use.
http://marksilk.religionnews.com/2016/02/15/justice-scalias-terrible-religious-legacy/
Jim__
(14,083 posts)... a law against giving alcohol to minors and the specific case involved communion wine? My best guess is that Scalia would have ruled in favor of the religious right of the people to give communion wine to minors, and to protect their right to unemployment if they were fired for doing that. My problem with Scalia is that I think he both could and would use his supposed original intent reading to justify doing whatever he wanted to do.
rug
(82,333 posts)I can't easily imagine a scenario where an employee, let alone a child of an employee, woud be given communion wine at a workplace (assuming the party wasn't a pastor,)
For starters, every state I'm aware of exempts communion wine from the prohibition against giving alcohol to minors. In fact not even Prohibition prohibited that practice.
But my guess is, assuming the issue of distributing communion in a workplace was not before the Court, my guess is he would have allowed it, mainly because the practice is not per se unlawful inside or outside the workplace.
But based on his opinion in Smith, he would not extend that to peyote or Rastafarians.
The underlying question is , though, would he have found taking communion at the workplace a constitutional right. As he did here, he likely would have said no.
Jim__
(14,083 posts)From the decision:
...
I haven't read through the whole decision, but based on the little bit I did read, I got the impression that they took the drug at a religious ceremony. I definitely agree that being on peyote while counseling against drug use at a rehab center would be an offense that involves a compelling government interest.