The evangelicals and conservatives thought that textualism would solely help their pet causes.
The
litigation some believers and employers feared is in the offing.
Bostock v. Clayton County (2020)
Employers fear that complying with Title VII’s requirement in cases like ours may require some employers to violate their religious convictions.
We are also deeply concerned with preserving the promise of the free exercise of religion enshrined in our Constitution; that guarantee lies at the heart of our pluralistic society.
But worries about how Title VII may intersect with religious liberties are nothing new; they even predate the statute’s passage.
As a result of its deliberations in adopting the law, Congress included an express statutory exception for religious organizations.
This Court has also recognized that the First Amendment can bar the application of employment discrimination laws “to claims concerning the employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministers.”
And Congress has gone a step further yet in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA).
That statute prohibits the federal government from substantially burdening a person’s exercise of religion unless it demonstrates that doing so both furthers a compelling governmental interest and represents the least restrictive means of furthering that interest.
Because RFRA operates as a kind of super statute, displacing the normal operation of other federal laws, it might supersede Title VII’s commands in
appropriate cases. But how these doctrines protecting religious liberty interact with Title VII are questions for
future cases too.
