re: #211 carlaschluge

Religious institutions already comply with very similar laws to the announced January 20 rule in 28 states. Catholic Charities challenged substantially similar laws to the new federal regulation in two states, California and New York, and the highest courts in both states held that there was no violation of the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion. That’s because the law doesn’t “substantially burden” anyone’s religious practice and is one of general applicability that was not targeted at infringing a particular religious practice.

To permit religious beliefs to “excuse compliance with otherwise valid laws regulating matters the state is free to regulate,” would, the California Supreme Court wrote in its 2004 decision, quoting from a U.S. Supreme Court case, “‘make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.’”
religiondispatches.org