First Amendment

Melissa Rogers considers what a healthy role for religion in American public life might look like.

Peyote use has been defended with religious liberty arguments. So has Bible reading in public schools.

Like many legal and moral disputes, the case involving a Colorado bakery and a same-sex couple hinges on finding the right analogy.

Strongly held differences of opinion in our nation's life require both legal protection and public respect.

Several recent state-level legislative efforts have something in common: they are solutions in search of a problem.

In the 1990s the U.S. Supreme Court decided a handful of religious liberty cases on the basis of the First Amendment’s free speech clause. The most significant of these was Rosenberger v. University of Virginia (1995). In that case, the University of Virginia had denied funding to a religious student publication called Wide Awake. The case began with a focus on the establishment clause, and it might have been based on the free exercise of religion—but it ended up being about free speech.

A federal judge in Eastern Missouri has upheld the government mandate that insurance policies cover birth control. Judge Carol E. Jackson ruled that the mandate is not a violation of religious liberty. Religious freedom is “a shield, not a sword,” she said, and religious liberty claims cannot be used as a “means to force one’s religious practices upon others.” Her argument closely aligns with points that the Century made some months ago in an editorial and that I tried to make in a blog post.

First the bishops sought an expanded exemption. Now they claim the contraception mandate itself violates religious liberty. It doesn't.