Not Content with Right to Opt Out, Conservative Christians Ask Courts to Eliminate Rights of Others and they are Winning
RELIGION DISPATCHES
ELIZABETH REINER PLATT JANUARY 9, 2023
Last week, the Texas Tribune reported that 156 federally-funded family planning programs in Texas must now require parental consent in order to provide teen patients with contraceptive services. Why? Because one Texas parent wants to raise his daughters “in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality,” something he claims is not possible so long as anyone under the age of 18 has access to contraception.
How can a single faith practitioner’s right to “religious liberty” allow them to stymie an entire government program that provides healthcare to millions? This alarming prospect is now at issue, not just in the family planning case mentioned above, but in multiple lawsuits in which plaintiffs argue that the mere existence of government programs they oppose wrongfully burdens their religious exercise.
In most religious liberty lawsuits, it’s extremely clear when the government is placing a “substantial burden” (the legal term of art in these cases) on religious activity. Policies that bar a Sikh soldier from wearing a turban, require a Seventh Day Adventist government employee to work on Saturdays, or deny a Jewish or Muslim person access to kosher or halal food in prison have been extensively litigated. If and when such plaintiffs win their claim, they gain a right to personal accommodations that allow them to practice their faith—for example, an individual right to wear a turban or receive kosher food.
Seizing the opportunity to vastly expand religious rights in an era when the courts are increasingly sympathetic toward claims brought by conservative Christians, we’re now seeing plaintiffs argue that the existence of a government social or health program that benefits the public at large violates their religious exercise. Rather than requesting personal religious exemptions from government policies, they are demanding that entire government systems be altered or shut down to accommodate their religious beliefs.
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