Despite the removal last month of Sen. David Burns and his Republican colleagues’ bill LD 1340, An Act to Enact the Preservation of Religious Freedom Act, the door is not shut on this contentious topic.
The religious freedom bills, regardless from which state, how they are worded and whether they’re being proposed or have been on the books for 20 years, have one thing in common: They each are a Trojan Horse lying in wait. They also are the tip of the iceberg.
Last November, Texas’ State Board of Education approved new history textbooks for use beginning this fall that some academics say exaggerate the influence of Moses in American democracy and negatively portray Muslims. The books will be used for at least a decade. In Tennessee, the Republican-controlled state House of Representatives recently voted 55 to 38 to approve the Bible as the official state book. A similar bill is in progress for the Tennessee state Senate, where Republicans hold 28 seats to five for Democrats.
Iowa’s Tamara Scott, a Republican National Committeewoman, recently made the case for teaching Christianity in public schools. And let’s not forget that in Maine’s last legislative session, Burns, R-Whiting, submitted a similar bill, LD 1428, An Act To Protect Religious Freedom. Will this bill return in the next Legislature?
What will happen if one of these or a religious freedom is used in a case that makes it to the Supreme Court? Consider Justice Ginsburg’s comment from July 2014 following the Hobby Lobby decision.
“Approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be perceived as favoring one religion over another, the very risk the [Constitution’s] Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.”
Ginsburg is frustrated and giving fair warning that this is just the beginning. We as a country have not learned our lesson from five years ago with Citizens United. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the United States Supreme Court held that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting political independent expenditures by corporations, associations or labor unions. In McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, the United States Supreme Court took its original Citizens United decision and extended it when it invalidated aggregate contribution limits as violating the First Amendment.
Between those two decisions came AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, where the Supreme Court ruled the Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 preempts state laws that prohibit contracts from disallowing class-wide arbitration. By permitting contracts that exclude class action arbitration, the high court’s decision allowed businesses to prevent consumers with whom they contract from filing class action lawsuits. By April 2012, Concepcion was cited in at least 76 decisions sending putative class actions to individual arbitration.
Corporations are people, but individual people cannot band together to bring action against corporations who are people. Dismantle unions and individual people cannot band together to bring action against corporations who are people. The pattern is obvious. The conservatives on the Supreme Court knew those types of cases following Citizens United would come. All they had to do was set the wheels in motion — an easy task when you have a lifetime to wait.
Thomas Czyz is an IT consultant who relocated to Falmouth four years ago from Chicago.