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VARIETIES OF BURDEN IN RELIGIOUS ACCOMMODATIONS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2019

Anna Su
Anna Su*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Law, University of Toronto
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Abstract

Religious accommodation analysis often takes the form of a tripartite test. One of the factors in such a test is the presence of burden, the current judicial understandings of which have been inadequate to capture a wide range of impact that government regulations have on the individual or community practice of religion. This article considers and compares the jurisprudence of the high courts of the United States and Canada and the European Court of Human Rights and argues for an expansive understanding of the burden requirement in the evaluation of religious accommodation claims, namely to consider burden as (1) coercion, (2) impact, and (3) ratification. I argue that it is imperative to acknowledge different kinds of burden before proceeding to determine its gravity. This approach takes religion more seriously than prevailing approaches and provides for a more equitable distribution of the burden of proof in religious accommodation claims.

Keywords

substantial burdeninfringementinterferencereligious accommodationsReligious Freedom Restoration Actfreedom of religionreligious exemption
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , April 2019 , pp. 42 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 2019 

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References

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111 Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell, 794 F.3d 1151, 1194 (10th Cir. 2015).

112 Id. at 1191.

113 Gedicks, supra note 57; Helfand, supra note 61; Corbin, supra note 56.

114 S.L. v. Commission scolaire des Chênes [2012] S.C.R. 7, para. 24 (Can.).

115 Id.

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118 [2012] S.C.R. 72. Note that in the Hutterian case the Supreme Court of Canada reasoned that the Hutterites had a meaningful alternative of hiring others to drive for them (since they will not be able to obtain driver's licenses without subjecting themselves to the photo requirement). See supra note 54.

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121 See generally the essays in Religious Exemptions (Kevin Vallier & Michael Weber eds., 2018).