I can say with supreme confidence that "my" religious group has not done a particularly good job representing my interests. They cannot, as they do not know me, and my sincere religious beliefs are in conflict in significant ways with other members of my religion. Even if I was within the majority of my group, however the political economy ends up slicing us up, that group would have done a remarkably poor job representing me several years ago when I was part of a different religious grouping. If courts are poor arbiters of what a qualifies substantial burden on my personal religious practicing, a legislature lobbied by the currently leading faction of a religious group is even worse! At the very least, in court, I, or my advocate, can stand for *my* beliefs, not the beliefs as found on the about page of a church website.
Which is the same problem as anytime rights are granted to abstracted entities instead of to natural persons. Mr. Peabody (no relation to the dog, I assume) just illustrated it well: the religious rights of the self, trampled by the religious preferences of another. Whether against company boss or lobbyist, the individual's religious rights are their own. -Kevin Chen -Kevin Chen On Tue, Mar 11, 2014 at 5:41 PM, Michael Peabody <mich...@californialaw.org>wrote: > > I appreciate the sentiment in opposition to Mississippi SB 2681 in that > this law would provide protection for business owners who wanted to > discriminate through their corporation. (I still can't see how this > wouldn't signal a breach in the corporate veil as the ultimate expression > of an alter ego, but I digress.) > > I'm reminded of a case I was involved with a few years ago represented a > plaintiff who was a member of a religious minority, employed for a secular > small company, who was terminated by her employer soon after the owner of > the company received a memorandum from a trusted staff member expressing > concern about religious "influences" that conflicted with the evangelical > world view of the owner. Had an Arizona-style RFRA been in place, the > employer would have used the law against my client as a defense, and could > have claimed that he was in fact a victim of an attempt to force him to > maintain the employment of people who did not share his (i.e. the > company's) religious beliefs. > > Conceivably this type of event would be repeated over and over and the > discrimination would become systematic. > > However there does not seem to be a need to diminish the existing > individual religious exercise rights which are protected under the existing > state RFRAs. In many ways, RFRAs for individuals (not businesses) are the > guardians of individual rights to free exercise of religion. > > Michael Peabody, Esq. > ReligiousLiberty.TV > > _______________________________________________ > 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. >
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