Being Fair to Church Autonomy After Smith

Stuart McPhail makes an interesting observation in his short essay “Being FAIR to Religion: Rumsfeld v. FAIR’s Impact on the Associational Rights of Religious Organizations,” 3 Harv. L. & Pol’y Rev. 221 (2009), which was recently brought to my attention by the Alliance Defense Fund’s excellent “Alliance Alert” daily email (a must-read for scholars and activists interested in religious liberty, marriage, or life issues). In the essay, McPhail looks at the freedom of expressive association doctrine as an alternative grounding for the rights of religious organizations. He does so because he questions whether the traditional protection for such rights, the church autonomy doctrine, has survived the Supreme Court’s decision in Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990).

McPhail asks “whether or not the church autonomy doctrine has survived Smith.” He acknowledges that courts which have considered the matter, including five federal circuit courts, have held that it did so. However, he questions whether “Smith ended religious organizations’ unique associational rights, leaving only the protections for expressive associations and any limitations to them, upon which all other organizations must rely.” 

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Supreme Court Grants Cert in USERRA Cat Paw’s Case

Cats_paw Ross Runkel’s LawMemo has news of the U.S. Supreme Court granting cert. in a USERRA cat paw case.  You may recall that the Court previously took cert. in another cat’s paw case in 2007 in the Title VII context (BCI Coca-Cola Bottling v. EEOC), but that case was never heard by the Court because it settled.

Here is the 411 from Ross on Staub v. Proctor Hospital (US Supreme Ct cert granted 04/19/2010): 

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Do Athletes Have Better Brains Than the Rest of Us?

Many people, particularly those who lack or have little athletic ability, perceive elite athletic performance as solely a function of outstanding physical abilities and skills. In a recent article with the above title, Carl Zimmer writes: “The qualities that set a great athlete apart from the rest of us lie not just in the muscles and the lungs but also between the ears. That’s because athletes need to make complicated decisions in a flash.” His article describes several neurological studies of the brains of great athletes in an effort to learn more about how the brain works. Research suggests that the brains of elite athletes are more efficient and able to respond more quickly to rapidly changing variables, which enables their bodies to perform physical tasks much better and faster than those with average brains.  To me, this suggests that great athletes, with the necessary legal education, would make good trial lawyers.

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