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GLAD to Supreme Court: Do Not Upend Vital Nondiscrimination Protections
GLAD and Other LGBTQ Organizations Urge Supreme Court Not to Upend Settled and Vital Nondiscrimination Protections
GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders, joined by 27 other national, regional and state LGBTQ advocacy organizations, filed a friend-of-the-court brief August 20 urging the U.S. Supreme Court not to create a broad Constitutional exemption to nondiscrimination laws that would undermine equal protection guarantees and introduce a dangerous and unworkable scheme into local, state and federal lawmaking.
The brief was filed in support of the City of Philadelphia in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia. In 2018, the city suspended a contract with Catholic Social Services (“CSS”) to provide foster care placement services because the agency refused to work with married same-sex couples and unmarried couples in violation of Philadelphia’s nondiscrimination ordinance. CSS filed suit, asserting that the requirement to comply with the nondiscrimination law violated its religious liberty rights and seeking an injunction ordering the city to grant CSS a contract in accordance with the terms CSS desired. Lower courts denied the request for an injunction, ruling that the city was within its rights to require any agency with which it contracts to comply with the law.
Somehow religious organizations think that it is okay to sign a contract saying you will do one thing ad doing another. I don’t know about you but I consider that as fraud and obtaining money under false pretenses.
Were the Supreme Court to side with CSS, it could create a broad exemption from nondiscrimination laws that extends not only to any religiously-based entity that receives taxpayer funding to provide government-contracted services, but potentially to any individual government employee or private entity that claims religious belief as a reason not to comply with the law. Such a rule would invite increased discrimination against LGBTQ people as well as people of color, women, and members of minority faiths.
“Religious belief is protected in our laws and Constitution and it is due respect,” said Mary L. Bonauto, GLAD’s Civil Rights Project Director. “However, the breadth of the exemption being sought by CSS in Fulton would take our nation backwards. It would allow individual religious disapproval to work its way back into lawmaking – a situation that is contrary to the promise of equal protection for all embedded in our Constitution, and one that the American people and two decades of Supreme Court precedent have already rejected.”
Religious organizations want two sets of laws… one for them and one for us.
They signed a contract and now they don’t want to follow what they agreed to do.
How do you think this would go over if you refused to pay interest on your credit cards?
You tell the credit card company that you are not paying interest because it is against your religion to pay interest and you site,
Exodus 22:25And…
“If you lend money to any of my people with you who is poor, you shall not be like a moneylender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him.
Deuteronomy 23:19-20What do you think the credit card company would say?
“You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest.
What about the courts, would they agree to your religious exemption?
Then why does the Catholic Social Services think that they can sign a contract and then ignore the terms of that contract?
To me it still is amazing that the Catholic church has been able to continue to carry its baggage into this century. Yes I too wonder what the credit card company would say. I am sure these religious nuts would find some way to squirm their way out of it. They always have a verse up their sleeve. Too bad someone didn't stop them all years ago.
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