It is hard to set up such a system for cab drivers -- think of cabbies waiting at an airport where 6 in a row refuse passengers based on their possession of a bottle of wine. It may be a longish wait or even a very long wait for the non-discriminating cabbie. Or just hailing one on the street -- where would the sign be displayed? When would the discussion take place? How? Tiny burden on those cabbies, it seems to me. And if they can't abide by the rules, get a different job. Public accommodations and public services just should not allow that sort of accommodation when the service is being denied to others -- it is burdening others based on difference of religion -- for the provision of a public service.
Many accommodations that might seem easy from the outside turn out not to be so easy. Of course some accommodations are in fact quite easy and not as burdensome as some people (often employers) think they will be. In practical areas one should not be quite confident in the ease of applying a seemingly "principled" disctinction. Steve On Mar 5, 2012, at 2:34 PM, Volokh, Eugene wrote: > > > From: Volokh, Eugene > Sent: Monday, March 05, 2012 11:32 AM > To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics > Subject: RE: Israeli Postal Workers Object to Delivering New Testaments > > There are, it seems to me, two significant differences > between the postal worker refusal and the taxi driver refusal: > > (1) A postal worker is a government employee who is refusing > to do what he is being paid to do. The taxi driver is a private individual, > and while he may have a government-provided partial monopoly (as do lawyers, > doctors, and others), he is still deciding what to do on his own private time > and within his own private car. > > (2) It shouldn’t be hard to set up a system by which cab > drivers who want an exemption from the carry-everyone rule on this point must > make their preferences clear, for instance with a prominently visible logo, > or a statement from the dispatcher when they’re ordered by phone. Such a > system should minimize any surprising delays for passengers, while letting > taxi drivers engage in their profession without violating their religious > principles. It may be harder to have any such system with postal workers, if > they have fixed routes; even if some postal workers don’t object to > delivering the Bibles, setting up extra visits from those non-objecting > postal workers to fill the delivery gaps created by the objecting workers > might be much more burdensome. > > Eugene > > From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu > [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Marci Hamilton > Sent: Monday, March 05, 2012 8:43 AM > To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics > Cc: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics > Subject: Re: Israeli Postal Workers Object to Delivering New Testaments > > This is also related to Islamic taxi drivers that refuse to > transport passengers who have bottles of > alcohol, eg, cases of wine from their travels > > On Mar 5, 2012, at 11:26 AM, Rick Duncan <nebraskalawp...@yahoo.com> wrote: > > _______________________________________________ > To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu > To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see > http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw > > Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as > private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; > people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) > forward the messages to others. -- Prof. Steven D. Jamar vox: 202-806-8017 Associate Director, Institute for Intellectual Property and Social Justice http://iipsj.org Howard University School of Law fax: 202-806-8567 http://iipsj.com/SDJ/ "Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn't filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear." Naomi Klein
_______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
