It seems to me that much depends on context. Where a community policing strategy makes it important for the police department to have ongoing relationships with particular religious groups (e.g. to overcome resistance to reporting co-religionists' actions to authorities), then I do not think there is a serious constitutional problem. A reasonable person would not see this as an endorsement of the religious group's beliefs. On the other hand, where the reservation of a seat is intended to assure that the dominant religious group in the community will be able to perpetuate its influence, that seems to me to be a different story. Also, what authority does the police commission have in this community? How many members does it have? How are the others chosen, and why? These all seem relevant. This triggers in my head the famous lines from Robert Cover's Nomos and Narrative-- "There is a difference between sleeping late on Sunday and refusing the sacraments, between having a snack and desecrating the fast of Yom Kippur, between banking a check and refusing to pay your income tax."
Howard Friedman ________________________________ From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] on behalf of Alan E Brownstein [aebrownst...@ucdavis.edu] Sent: Saturday, November 14, 2015 4:01 PM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: reserved seat for member of religious organization on police comission Anyone have any thoughts on the constitutionality of a rule that reserves one seat on a multi-member police commission for a member of a local religious organization (any religious organization would be acceptable) who is nominated by the organization. Some compensation is involved. Alan
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