When did religious belief become an excuse to discriminate?
Emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court, today’s religious right is pressing in courts nationwide for what amounts to a sweeping right to discriminate. U.S. courts are flooded with cases brought by institutions claiming their right to religious freedom entitles them to refuse to comply with anti-discrimination laws.
Under the banner of religion, an employer is asserting a right to deny its workers insurance coverage for drugs that prevent HIV— an argument that just Wednesday found favor in federal court. Religiously affiliated schools posit a right to fire unmarried pregnant women. And taxpayer-funded child placement agencies turn away families seeking to foster or adopt because they are Jewish, Catholic or a same-sex couple.
For the past decade, the American Civil Liberties Union has tracked cases invoking a religious right to discriminate, and we’ve never been more alarmed. The sheer number of these cases has exploded. In 2012, the first ACLU report documenting them came in at seven single-spaced pages. The most recent report runs close to 30.
The scope of these claims has also mushroomed. When we began our monitoring, most claimants sought to restrict women’s access to abortion and contraception and deny wedding services to same-sex couples. Now, in the name of religion, businesses assert a right to refuse to hire LGBTQ people, public school teachers a right to misgender students and others a right to discriminate against terminally ill patients exploring end of life options.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/07/supreme-court-religious-right-antidiscrimination-laws/
= new reply since forum marked as read
