Religious-liberty jurisprudence asymmetrically weighs believers’ burden against outsiders’ harm

Evidence

In the case of the Priests for Life v. United States Department of Health and Human Services, Kavanaugh took the view that the requirement that nuns fill out a one-page form that would have exempted them from providing contraception coverage to their employees imposed a “substantial burden” on their organization’s free exercise of religion. Clearly he keenly felt the nuns’ anguish about sharing a government with women who can exercise control over their reproductive health. … But in Garza v. Hargan, he thought it was no real burden at all for a minor-aged girl, eighteen weeks pregnant and in federal custody, to be denied access to the abortion she desperately wanted. … Thus he offered a precise rendering of how “religious liberty” works in Christian nationalist circles today. You maximize the moral anguish of those whose “values” you share and protect their “rights” wherever possible. And you minimize the suffering of those who don’t belong to the group and treat their rights as merely selfish demands. — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 950

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The asymmetry framing — maximize in-group moral anguish, minimize out-group suffering — is a genuinely portable analytic lens for reading religious-liberty law beyond any single case.
• XREF: connects to: Catholic hospital contraception bans leave HIV patients on teratogenic drugs unprotected — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 912; A Catholic hospice’s silence on aid-in-dying pushed a terminal patient to suicide — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 937; Catholic hospital abortion bans deny care even after fetal death is certain — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers: Inside the…, 914 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Religious minorities’ rights assertions affirm rather than threaten American institutions #contradicts (0.78) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 285
• Religious freedom requires more than legal protection from persecution #expands (0.75)
• Religious accommodation precedents at national level can justify local-level exemptions #exemplifies (0.72) — Moustafa Bayoumi, How Does It Feel to Be a Problem? Being…, 387