Legal Scholars & Theologians Partner on an Ambitious Vision for Religious Liberty

Oct. 6, 2020—To safeguard the right to religious freedom, the next presidential administration must end the hyper-surveillance of Muslims, welcome religious refugees, protect land sacred to Native communities, restore church-state separation, and withdraw policies that favor particular religious beliefs, argues a new report co-authored by the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia University (LRRP) and Auburn Seminary

Bearing Faith: The Limits of Catholic Health Care for Women of Color

This study finds that in nineteen out of the thirty-four states/territories that we studied, women of color are more likely than white women to give birth at hospitals bound by the ERDs. Women of color’s disproportionate reliance on Catholic hospitals in these states increases their exposure to restrictions that place religious ideology over best medical practices. To determine whether women of color disproportionately give birth at hospitals operating under the ERDs, we compared the percentage of births to women of color at Catholic and non-Catholic hospitals. In over half of the states we studied (19 out of 33 states plus Puerto Rico) we found that women of color are more likely than white women to give birth at hospitals operating under the ERDs. The racial disparity in birth rates at Catholic hospitals is especially striking in some states. For example, in Maryland, three-quarters of the births in Catholic hospitals are to women of color, while women of color represent less than half the births at non-Catholic facilities. In New Jersey, women of color make up 50% of all women of reproductive age, yet represent 80% of births at Catholic hospitals

We the People (of Faith): The Supremacy of Religious Rights in the Shadow of a Pandemic

Late on a Friday evening in April 2021, over a year into the COVID-19 crisis, the Supreme Court issued a brief opinion that dramatically transformed constitutional law. In the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime global pandemic, the Court ruled in Tandon v. Newsom that state and local governments seeking to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus may not restrict in-person religious gatherings more rigorously than any other type of activity, such as shopping for groceries or working at a warehouse. The opinion was only one in a barrage of cases filed in federal courts across the country — many brought by conservative legal nonprofits — seeking to deny states and localities the power to apply COVID restrictions to religious practitioners

Whose Faith Matters? The Fight for Religious Liberty Beyond the Christian Right

By offering a sweeping account of religious liberty activism being undertaken by numerous progressive humanitarian and social justice movements, and uncovering how right-wing activists have fought for conservative Christian hegemony rather than “religious liberty” more generally, this report challenges the leading popular narrative of religious freedom

The Southern Hospitals Report

When research for this report was first initiated, it was intended to answer a narrow question: is abortion care restricted at historically Protestant hospitals in the U.S. South? Strict limits on access to abortion at Catholic hospitals — and the ways in which this can obstruct and delay even emergency medical care — are already well documented in legal and medical literature and news media. In contrast, restrictions at Protestant hospitals have not been extensively studied and are not well understood. Our research sought to fill this gap in knowledge. We focused on the U.S. South because Catholic hospitals are less concentrated in the South than in other regions (especially the Midwest and Pacific Northwest), leaving Protestant hospitals to play a potentially larger role in the delivery of medical care

All Faiths & None: A Guide to Protecting Religious Liberty for Everyone

Religious liberty rights have been immeasurably damaged over the past several years — often in the name of protecting religious liberty. Government officials have embraced Islamophobic policies and rhetoric; shut the door on refugees fleeing religious persecution; elevated the religious rights of their political allies over the rights — religious and otherwise — of other communities; used religion as a tool of economic deregulation; and denigrated the beliefs of religious minorities, atheists, and religious progressives. To achieve true freedom for those of all faiths and none, a complete overhaul of religious liberty policy, and a new understanding of what this right truly means, is necessary. This report offers guidance on how a future presidential administration could protect religious freedom — not merely for a favored few, but for everyone. While we discuss specific policy measures necessary to protect religious liberty, the report is organized around a set of overarching principles in order to provide more holistic guidance about the true meaning of religious freedom

Religious Liberty for a Select Few

This report discusses how the Department of Justice’s guidance opens the door to an extreme rewriting of the concept of religious liberty. The guidance — and the numerous agency rules, enforcement actions, and policies that it is influencing — will shift the balance of individual religious protections across the federal government toward a new framing that allows religious beliefs to be used as a weapon against minority groups

Legal Scholars & Theologians Partner on an Ambitious Vision for Religious Liberty

Oct. 6, 2020—To safeguard the right to religious freedom, the next presidential administration must end the hyper-surveillance of Muslims, welcome religious refugees, protect land sacred to Native communities, restore church-state separation, and withdraw policies that favor particular religious beliefs, argues a new report co-authored by the Law, Rights, and Religion Project at Columbia University (LRRP) and Auburn Seminary

Amicus Brief to U.S. Supreme Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Human Rights Commission

On October 30, 2017 the Public Rights/Private Conscience Project, a research initiative of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School, filed a brief in Masterpiece Cakeshop. The brief was written in coordination with our colleagues at Muslim Advocates, on behalf of 15 religious minority groups and civil rights advocates. The brief argues that the broad interpretation urged by Masterpiece Cakeshop is bad for religious liberty itself – especially for religious minorities such as Muslims, Sikhs, and other minority religious groups. The Public Rights/Private Conscience Project\u27s position is that the Court’s early religious liberty cases were built on equality principles and that the two are mutually reinforcing values – thus the Court should interpret religious liberty in ways that are equality-enhacing, not equality-diminishing. The Public Rights/Private Conscience Project is Directed by Elizabeth Reiner Platt; Professor Katherine Franke is the Faculty Director of the Project, and Director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law

Bearing Faith: The Limits of Catholic Health Care for Women of Color

This study finds that in nineteen out of the thirty-four states/territories that we studied, women of color are more likely than white women to give birth at hospitals bound by the ERDs. Women of color’s disproportionate reliance on Catholic hospitals in these states increases their exposure to restrictions that place religious ideology over best medical practices. To determine whether women of color disproportionately give birth at hospitals operating under the ERDs, we compared the percentage of births to women of color at Catholic and non-Catholic hospitals. In over half of the states we studied (19 out of 33 states plus Puerto Rico) we found that women of color are more likely than white women to give birth at hospitals operating under the ERDs. The racial disparity in birth rates at Catholic hospitals is especially striking in some states. For example, in Maryland, three-quarters of the births in Catholic hospitals are to women of color, while women of color represent less than half the births at non-Catholic facilities. In New Jersey, women of color make up 50% of all women of reproductive age, yet represent 80% of births at Catholic hospitals