More disturbing details about Kagan (supporting gov evangelism and religious discrimination)

[usregimechange]

Considering discrimination in housing as a burden on the landlord’s religion

The case involved a California woman who refused to lease an apartment to an unmarried couple because she considered a sexual relationship outside marriage to be a sin. The California Supreme Court ruled that she violated a state law prohibiting housing discrimination on the basis of marital status.

Ms. Kagan objected to the California court ruling and recommended that the federal government support an appeal to the United States Supreme Court. She noted that the plurality of California justices ruled that the state housing law did not “substantially burden” the landlord’s religion “because she could earn a living in some other way than by leasing apartments.”

“The plurality’s reasoning seems to me quite outrageous — almost as if a court were to hold that a state law does not impose a substantial burden on religion because the complainant is free to move to another state,” Ms. Kagan wrote. “Taken seriously, this kind of reasoning could strip RFRA of any real meaning.”


Supporting federal evangelism

Ms. Kagan was also involved in the drafting of an executive order signed by Mr. Clinton that laid out guidelines for religious expression in the federal workplace. In a memo dated Oct. 18, 1996, she noted that she had been working with a coalition of religious groups as well as liberal secular advocates to find a consensus on the issue.

While the executive order recognized that there were limits on federal employees’ talking about religion or displaying religious items in the workplace, she wrote, “the order tries to show (much as the guidelines on religion in the public schools tried to show) that within these constraints, there is substantial room for discussion of religious matters.”

Still, she noted opposition to the order from the Justice Department. While the department’s Office of Legal Counsel had approved the draft for legality, “the Department of Justice as a whole is quite negative about the order,” she wrote. “D.O.J. believes that the document does not give enough weight to establishment-clause concerns” and “conveys a tone that is too permissive of employee religious expression.”

The debate over the order would continue for 10 more months; Mr. Clinton did not ultimately sign it until Aug. 14, 1997, two months after the Supreme Court decision largely striking down the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

While hailed by some on both sides of the ideological divide as a good-faith effort to find a balance on a tough issue, the executive order was also criticized by some on the left as being tantamount to an invitation to federal employees to evangelize at the office and by some on the right for not going far enough to protect religious expression.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/12/us/politics/12kagan.html


The headlines are mine in bold and the text from the NYT. Please tell me I am reading this wrong.

[LeftyMom]

1. She's opposed to California anti-discrimination laws because they bother fundies?

FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK HER. Sideways.

[usregimechange]

2. Sure what it sounds like to me

[vi5]

3. But she'll be confirmed without a fight....

...and that means less people saying mean things to each other down in Washinton DC and less contentiousness and it can be called "Bipartisan". Which seems to be the priority for this administration over anything else.

[usregimechange]

4. good judge or easy confirmation...

[BzaDem]

5. At a glance, this does not seem bothersome at all.

In your first example, the argument is about statutory interpretation. The federal RFRA law prevented state laws that put a "substantial burden" on religious freedom. The California Supreme Court wrote an opinion that basically threw out RFRA (by basically saying that almost no state law could EVER place such a burden as a logical matter).

She opposed that opinion. That doesn't mean she would have enacted RFRA were she a legislator, and it doesn't even mean she wouldn't find RFRA unconstitutional. It just means she was defending the law as written, which in any case she was required to do by her job.

In the second case, she tried to balance the free exercise clause and the establishment clause. This is done all the time.