All Fall down: A Comprehensive Approach to Defeating the Religious Right's Challenges to Antidiscrimination Statutes

Kyle C. Velte

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The fulcrum ofthe modern-dayfight over LGBT civil rights is at the intersection of religious liberty as asserted by for-profit corporations and state antidiscrimination laws asserted by LGBT people who are refused goods, services, and other public accommodations by these for-profit corporations. Notwithstanding the significant victories of the LGBT civil rights movement over the past 20 years, anti-LGBT sentiment continues to run deep. The leading voice against LGBT civil rights is the Religious Right. While the Religious Right has vocally opposed LGBT equality and civil rights for decades, its narrative has drastically changed What was a narrative that attacked and pathologized LGBT people, today is a narrative that frames the Religious Right as victims of secularism-embodied in law-that infringes on their religious liberty. What is religious liberty? What roles do Obergefell, Hobby Lobby, Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, and the First Amendment play in the Religious Right's campaign for religiously-based exemptions from state antidiscrimination laws for for-profit corporations? What are the legal arguments that can be made to defeat this campaign? Neither Obergefell nor Hobby Lobby answered these questions. This Article does. It addresses and dismantles the legal claims asserted by the Religious Right to secure exemptions from state antidiscrimination lawsforfor-profit corporations. It concludes that state antidiscrimination laws may-consistent with Religious Freedom Restoration Acts and the First Amendment-be applied to for-profit corporations, regardless of the purported religious beliefs of those corporations. Moreover, they should be so applied to protect the both the rule oflaw and genuine religious freedom, which can only truly exist in the context or religious pluralism.

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