One Nation Two Sets Of Laws?

That is what our nation is becoming, a nation where you do not have to obey a law because it goes against their religious beliefs.

Editorial: Religious freedom is not a license to ignore civil-rights laws
LA Times
By The Times Editoral Board
September 1, 2020


During the term it completed in July, the Supreme Court decided several important cases involving religious liberty and one that expanded legal protection for gay Americans. In the term that begins next month, the justices will hear a case that purportedly pits those two interests against each other. But the real question in the case is simpler: whether a religious organization that receives government money can violate civil-rights laws. The answer is no.

Catholic Social Services of Philadelphia has long participated in the city’s efforts to place children in foster homes, receiving a payment from the city for each child who is placed. But the city stopped referrals to the agency because it wouldn’t work with same-sex couples as foster parents — a policy the city said violated its Fair Practices Ordinance prohibiting discrimination in public accommodations.

The case raises some of the same issues as a decision two years ago in which the court ruled in favor of a Christian baker who didn’t want to provide a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. But while the court ruled narrowly in the wedding-cake case — finding for the baker on the grounds that state civil rights commissioners made comments reflecting hostility to his religious beliefs [My emphasis] — this case raises the possibility of a more sweeping decision.

You know the Catholic Social Services of Philadelphia signed a contract saying that they would not discriminate but it seems that committing perjury is okay if it furthers “god’s work.”

Joined by three foster parents, Catholic Social Services went to court seeking to force the city to resume referring children to the agency, only to lose in federal district court and in the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals. Writing for the appeals court, Judge Thomas L. Ambro said: “The city’s nondiscrimination policy is a neutral, generally applicable law, and the religious views of CSS do not entitle it to an exception from that policy.”

The appeals court’s ruling was based on a 1990 Supreme Court decision, Employment Division of Oregon vs. Smith, which held that the 1st Amendment’s protection of the free exercise of religion didn’t allow believers to opt out of generally applicable laws. The ruling led Congress (and several states, including Pennsylvania) to enact statutes prohibiting governments from passing laws that substantially burden religious freedom unless they serve a compelling interest and are narrowly tailored.

The church said that if they can continue to refuse to marry same-sex couples legally they should be able to refuse same-sex adoptions, the editorial board said…

But the government isn’t involved in religious marriage ceremonies. By contrast, the city of Philadelphia is intimately implicated in foster-care arrangements made under a city contract. If a religiously affiliated agency seeks to enter into such a contract, it must agree not to discriminate against any group protected by anti-discrimination laws. That is how the court should rule.

There is a difference between being able to ignore a law for a religious ceremonially and one of beliefs.  There is a legal difference a law that is a neutral and is a compelling government interest such as banning discrimination.

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Now take a look at an Arizona case and you can see the difference, the Arizona case is what the law was meant to cover.

They left food and water for migrants in the desert. Now they might go to prison.
The Washington Post
By Kristine Phillips
January 20, 2019


During the summer of 2017, when temperatures reached triple digits in Arizona, four women drove to a vast desert wilderness along the southwestern border with Mexico. They brought water jugs and canned food — items they later said they were leaving for dehydrated migrants crossing the unfriendly terrain to get to the United States.

The women were later charged with misdemeanor crimes. Prosecutors said they violated federal law by entering Cabeza Prieta, a protected 860,000-acre refuge, without a permit and leaving water and food there. A judge convicted them on Friday in the latest example of growing tension between aid workers and the U.S. Border Patrol.

Aid workers say their humanitarian efforts, motivated by a deep sense of right and wrong, have been criminalized during the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal border crossings. Federal officials say they were simply enforcing the law.

The four women, all volunteers for the Arizona-based aid group No More Deaths, were convicted after a three-day bench trial at a federal court in Tucson. They could face up to six months in federal prison.

But then this year…

A judge overturned the convictions of four volunteers who left food and water for migrants in the desert
CNN
By Harmeet Kaur, 
February 6, 2020


After four aid volunteers entered an Arizona wildlife refuge in 2017 and left jugs of water and cans of beans for undocumented migrants to find, the volunteers were found guilty of breaking federal law.

Now, a federal judge has overturned their convictions.

On Monday, US District Judge Rosemary Márquez ruled that the volunteers, who were part of the No More Deaths ministry of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Tucson, were acting on their sincere religious beliefs when they left food and water for migrants in the desert of the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.

"Defendants met their burden of establishing that their activities were exercises of their sincere religious beliefs, and the Government failed to demonstrate that application of the regulations against Defendants is the least restrictive means of accomplishing a compelling interest," the ruling reads.

"Accordingly, the Court finds that application of the regulations against Defendants violates RFRA (the Religious Freedom Restoration Act), and the Court will reverse Defendants' convictions."

There is a difference between preventing deaths in the desert and discriminating against people and hopefully the Supreme Court will see it.

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In my traffic accident over the weekend… she admitted fault.