Two Sets Of Laws?

That is what it might boil down to, one set of laws for the non-believers and one for the true-believers. Sounds like something from the middle-east but not something from here in the U.S.

At Supreme Court, Justices Consider Religion, LGBTQ Rights
NPR
By Nina Totenberg
November 4, 2020


The U.S. Supreme Court may be poised to side with Catholic Social Services in a battle that pits religious freedom against anti-discrimination laws in Philadelphia and across the country.

At issue in a case argued on Wednesday is the Catholic charity's refusal to screen same-sex couples as foster care parents.
[...]
Wednesday's case, however, involved government contracting — an area of the law in which the court in the past has said that government is at the apex of its power to impose conditions. On one side is the city of Philadelphia, which has custody of about 5,000 abused and neglected children, and contracts with 30 private agencies to provide foster care in group homes and for the certification, placement, and care of children in individual private foster care homes.

The city's contracts ban discrimination against LGBTQ couples in the screening of foster parents, and Catholic Social Services, citing religious grounds, refuses to consider and certify same-sex married couples. Because of that, the city ended its contract with CSS for those services in the future. CSS sued, and two lower courts upheld the city's decision.

Okay what des this mean?

An agency signed a contract that they will obey the city and state non-discrimination laws, now Catholic Social Services is saying that they are not going to obey the laws that they agreed to follow. They are saying that it violates their religious beliefs. To me it seems like they should have sued before they signed a contract not after, by bring it afterwards they lied that they were going to follow the law. Um… isn’t lying a sin?

Justice Kavanaugh pursued another line of questioning. "It seems like Philadelphia ... was looking for a fight, and has brought that serious, controversial fight all the way to the Supreme Court, even though no same-sex couple had gone to CSS," he said.

Katyal replied that it was not the city, but CSS, that appealed this case all the way to the Supreme Court. One same-sex couple was, in fact, rejected by another religiously affiliated agency, he explained, and that agency then changed its policy. If CSS can refuse to certify same-sex couples, Katyal argued, agencies could refuse to allow Buddhists or Baptists too. And foster care agencies would be "balkanized."

Or what will happen if they refused an unmarried couple? Would that fall under “religious freedom?” Or would “religious freedom” just apply to us and wouldn’t that in it self be discrimination?
Breyer, Kagan, and Sotomayor brought up that question.

The court's three liberals — Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, both Jewish, and Sonia Sotomayor, who is Catholic — by contrast, stressed the city's ban on contracting with groups that discriminate based on race, ethnicity, religion and gender. What if an agency wanted to discriminate against an interracial couple, they asked.

So what did the newest member ask during the hearing?

Justice Barrett, for her part, asked more neutral questions, but seemed to draw a line between discrimination based on race, which she said "nobody on this court" would endorse, and discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, or other characteristics.

So she thinks it is okay to discriminate against us but not other protected classes.

In an article on Yahoo News said…

The Supreme Court is not accountable to public opinion. But to give you a sense of how out of step this conservative-packed, minority party-packed, and religious extremist-packed institution really is, consider this week’s major case, Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, about whether taxpayer-funded adoption and foster care agencies should be able to discriminate against would-be parents.

A poll released last week says 70 percent of Americans say no. Of course, taxpayer money shouldn’t be given to organizations that discriminate, regardless of those organizations’ religious affiliations. If you take government money, you should play by the same rules as everyone else.

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What does all this mean?

In the past before the court was packed with anti-LGBTQ, and anti-abortion has upheld the “Religious 
Neutrality” of the laws. There is something called the Lemon Test (which has nothing to do with lemons but rather the case was brought by Alton J. Lemon in 1971.

U.S. Legal defines the Lemon Test as…

The court in Lemon v. Kurtzman ruled three requirements for government concerning religion, they are:

1.The government's action must have a secular legislative purpose;
2.The government's action must not have the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion; and
3.The government's action must not result in an "excessive government entanglement" with religion.

Lemon test states that if any of the requirements are violated by government, the action is deemed to be unconstitutional under the Establishment clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. constitution.

So if you look at the requirements for the Philadelphia non-discrimination ordinance.

Does the ordinance have a secular purpose… yes. The law is against discrimination in certain protected classes.

Does the ordinance advance any particulate religions… no. 

Does the ordinance create an undo burden… no. This is a hotly contested requirement because “What is excessive government entanglement?

The Colorado Masterpiece Cakeshop Supreme Court case found that Colorado Civil Rights Commission used religion in their ruling.

So the question is, will the Supreme Court throw out the Lemon Test.

If they do throw out the test, will “religious freedom” only apply to LGBTQ non-discrimination laws or will it apply to all protected classes? If it only applies to us does that violate the 14th Amendment for the “equal protection of the laws” because it will not apply to all protected classes.

If they do toss out the Lemon Test then they have created two sets of laws and for the first time in the United States we will not be under one set of laws.