{"id":9681,"date":"2010-04-19T12:25:15","date_gmt":"2010-04-19T17:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=9681"},"modified":"2010-04-19T12:25:15","modified_gmt":"2010-04-19T17:25:15","slug":"being-fair-to-church-autonomy-after-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/04\/being-fair-to-church-autonomy-after-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Being Fair to Church Autonomy After Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stuart McPhail makes an interesting observation in his short essay “Being FAIR to Religion: Rumsfeld v. FAIR\u2019s<\/em> Impact on the Associational Rights of Religious Organizations,” 3 Harv. L. & Pol’y Rev. 221 (2009)<\/a>, which was recently brought to my attention by the Alliance Defense Fund\u2019s excellent \u201cAlliance Alert\u201d daily email<\/a> (a must-read\u00a0<\/a>for scholars and activists interested in religious liberty, marriage, or life issues). In\u00a0the essay, McPhail\u00a0looks 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\u2019s decision in Employment Division v. Smith<\/em>, 494 U.S. 872 (1990).<\/p>\n

McPhail asks \u201cwhether or not the church autonomy doctrine has survived Smith<\/em>.\u201d He acknowledges that courts which have considered the matter, including five federal circuit courts, have held that it did so. However, he questions whether \u201cSmith<\/em> ended religious organizations\u2019 unique associational rights, leaving only the protections for expressive associations and any limitations to them, upon which all other organizations must rely.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0He believes that \u201cthe survival of this latter doctrine is debatable in light of one of the most important Free Exercise cases of the recent Court: Employment Division v. Smith<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Missing from his discussion, however, is a key excerpt from the majority\u2019s opinion in Smith<\/em> itself. In an early paragraph, Justice Scalia specifically cites three key church autonomy cases, indicating their continuing vitality:<\/p>\n

Thus, the First Amendment obviously excludes all “governmental regulation of religious beliefs as such.” Sherbert v. Verner, supra<\/em>, 374 U.S. at 402. The government may not . . . lend its power to one or the other side in controversies over religious authority or dogma, see Presbyterian Church v. Hull Church<\/em>, 393 U.S. 440, 445-452 (1969); Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral<\/em>, 344 U.S. 94, 95-119 (1952); Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich<\/em>, 426 U.S. 696, 708-725 (1976).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The cases that Justice Scalia cited provide for a robust church autonomy, guaranteeing a \u201cspirit of freedom for religious organizations, an independence from secular control or manipulation — in short, power to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine,\u201d Kedroff<\/em>, 344 U.S. at\u00a0115.<\/p>\n

In short, I think there can be no doubt that the church autonomy doctrine survived Smith<\/em>, McPhail\u2019s concerns notwithstanding. Though he has other interesting points to make in the course of his essay, his suggestion that Smith<\/em> killed the church autonomy doctrine should not be allowed to pass unchallenged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stuart McPhail makes an interesting observation in his short essay “Being FAIR to Religion: Rumsfeld v. FAIR\u2019s 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\u2019s excellent \u201cAlliance Alert\u201d daily email (a must-read\u00a0for scholars and activists […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-scholarship","category-religion-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}