A Recent Ruling Gives the Lie to the Claim That the Religious Freedom Restoration Act Is a Tool of Oppression https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2020/03/a-recent-ruling-gives-the-lie-to-the-claim-that-the-religious-freedom-restoration-act-is-a-tool-of-oppression/

March 3, 2020 | Howard Slugh
About the author: Howard Slugh is the general counsel of the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty.

Addressing a congressional hearing last Thursday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez complained that conservatives invoke religious freedom only “in the name of bigotry and discrimination.” Such arguments, now commonplace in progressive circles, often point to the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and its state-level equivalents as especially suspect in this regard. That the claim is scurrilous is demonstrated by the recent decision of a federal district court in Arizona in favor of a group of Unitarian Universalists who illegally entered a wildlife refuge in order to provide food and supplies to illegal immigrants.

The ruling clarified many aspects of the RFRA’s interpretation, beginning with its applicability to any sincere religious belief, which places the burden of proof on the party arguing that a belief is insincere, as Howard Slugh explains:

Judges cannot substitute their own judgments for those of a litigant regarding the validity of his religious beliefs. It is understandable that a judge might find a practice that he has never heard of more suspicious than one he has. Most judges understand that a Christian in the military might need an accommodation related to Easter or Christmas. . . . But those same judges might be less familiar with accommodations needed by a Jewish soldier, such as being able to eat in an outdoor booth and carry a palm branch on the holiday of Sukkot.

By requiring concrete evidence of insincerity, judges can eliminate any temptation to deem adherents with familiar beliefs to be more sincere than those with unfamiliar beliefs.

After this discussion, the court turned to the question of whether the law placed a “substantial burden” on the defendants’ religious liberty, [since] the RFRA protects religious adherents only from substantial burdens on their faith. This requirement has been one of the most misunderstood provisions of the statute, with some claiming that a “substantial burden” exists only if the law in question requires religious adherents to violate a particularly important or “substantial” obligation of their faith. This is absurd. Courts have no expertise or authority to decide the relative importance of different religious requirements.

This interpretation [also] protects religious minorities: a judge is likely to recognize the importance of religious practices that are observed by major faiths, especially if he has personal experience of those practices; he is less likely to understand the importance of obscure practices held by religious minorities.

Read more on Public Discourse: https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2020/02/60838/