The O Centro case

Here is a short op-ed of mine about the Court's recent RFRA case, Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal:

. . . [L]ike the Court's decision last year in Cutter v. Wilkinson — which rejected the argument that another religious-accommodations law, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, was an illegal "establishment" of religion — the ruling in O Centro Espirita was unanimous. True, the justices have been and remain sharply divided in church-state cases involving public displays and government funds; but when it comes to legislative accommodations of religious exercise, they are united in recognizing that the Constitution permits special accommodations of religion and in insisting that accommodations laws secured through the political process should be meaningfully enforced. The fact that the Constitution rarely requires accommodations and exemptions does not and should not mean that they are or should be disfavored. . . .

Thinkers from St. Augustine and Pope Gregory VII to Roger Williams and James Madison have taught us that the "separation of church and state," properly understood, is an important component of religious freedom. That is, the institutional and jurisdictional separation of religious and political authority, the independence of religion from government oversight and control, respect for the freedom of individual conscience, government neutrality with respect to different religious traditions, and a strict rule against formal religious tests for public office — all these "separationist" features of our constitutional order have helped religious faith to thrive in America. Properly understood, the separation of church and state is not an anti-religious ideology, but rather, as John Courtney Murray put it, a "means, a technique, [and] a policy to implement the principle of religious freedom." And, as the Court's decision reminds us, one permissible and praiseworthy way to implement this principle is through popularly enacted, reasonable, and balanced religious-accommodations laws.