Law and Religion, Cases and Materials (University Casebook Series)

The fifth edition adds a new author. Andrew L. Seidel is a constitutional attorney that has spent a decade litigating religion clause cases. He’s author of The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism Is Un-American and American Crusade: How the Supreme Court Is Weaponizing Religious Freedom and Vice President of Strategic Communications at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. This edition was updated to include important new Supreme Court cases on state funding of churches and the religious freedom issues associated with COVID. The fifth edition continues the book’s interdisciplinary approach to law and religion, its student-friendly notes and questions, and its inclusion of numerous non-Supreme Court cases from a variety of state, federal, and international courts.

The chapters highlight the impact of the Court’s most recent cases on the subject matter of law and religion.

1. Free Exercise of Religion identifies the ever-increasing diversity of American religion versus non-religion. It includes United States v. Seeger, as a lead conscientious objection case explaining what the Court means by “religion.”
2. Introduction to Establishment includes the Court’s decision upholding government-sponsored prayer in Town of Greece v. Galloway, and asks how Establishment Clause jurisprudence has changed since Galloway.
3. What is an Establishment of Religion? examines establishment precedents about religious symbols and monuments, public funding of religion, and religious speech. The chapter includes the American Legion case upholding the peace cross on public property. It focuses on the Court’s recent approaches to the funding of religion in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley, Espinoza v. Montana, and Carson v. Makin.
4. Constitutional and Statutory Protection of Free Exercise provides extensive coverage of the Court’s free exercise case, Smith, and its interpretation in Fulton v. Philadelphia, which upheld religious freedom to discriminate against LGBTQ parents. It then reviews the Court’s RFRA decisions, RLUIPA cases, and the new law about religion and COVID.
5. Conscience, Complicity, and Conscientious Objection relates Hobby Lobby to the Court’s order searching a compromise between religious nonprofits and the government in Zubik v. Burwell, and the expansion of the contraceptive mandate in Little Sisters of the Poor. This chapter explores military, medical, and legal conscientious objection and analyzes the increasing number of complicity claims faced by courts hearing RFRA cases. It also includes the case of Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
6. Conflicts between Individual and Institutional Religious Freedom explores the Court’s increasing protection of institutional over individual religious freedom by looking at three topics: church property disputes, employment discrimination, and torts. The employment discrimination section includes an overview of Title VII’s religious discrimination provisions and the Court’s decision interpreting them in EEOC v. Abercrombie and Fitch. The chapter also explores in detail the repercussions of Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, and the new ministerial exception case, Morrissey-Berru, to see what freedom religions enjoy in the employment setting.
7. Comparative Religious Freedom includes cases from other countries that parallel the subjects already studied in earlier chapters of the casebook. A section on religious garb, including a Turkish case about hijab bans, recalls Abercrombie. A section on blasphemy connects to the free (religious) speech jurisprudence. Conscience receives extensive treatment because it has become so important in U.S. law. Chapter 8 includes Bayatyan v. Armenia, in which the European Court of Human Rights recognized a religious freedom right to military conscientious objection for a Jehovah’s Witness who objected to military service. It also presents a British case similar in reasoning to the Kentucky clerk’s c