Two Concepts of Judicial Deference to Religious Claims

BYU Law Review Volume 50 Issue 5 Article 9 Summer 7-16-2025 Two Concepts of Judicial Deference to Religious Claims Chagai Schlesinger Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/lawreview Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Chagai Schlesinger, Two Concepts of Judicial Deference to Religious Claims, 50 BYU L. Rev. 1355 (2025). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/lawreview/vol50/iss5/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Brigham Young University Law Review at BYU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in BYU Law Review by an authorized editor of BYU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact . 4.SCHLESINGER.FIN.NH.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 6/16/25 8:52 AM Two Concepts of Judicial Deference to Religious Claims Chagai Schlesinger* Religious exemptions from general laws are everywhere. The U.S. Supreme Court is expanding its exemption doctrine, systemically preferring religious needs over conflicting considerations. This ignites an ongoing debate between those celebrating religious liberties and those fearing their societal costs. Assessing this judicial trend, as this Article highlights, requires noticing how it is facilitated by a broad deferential approach to religious claims, refraining from evaluating their content. This Article argues that this broad expression of judicial deference is analytically flawed and normatively implausible. The problem lies in the failure to distinguish between two types of religious claims when deferring to them: claims based on religious conscience and claims protecting communal autonomy. The normative implications of this distinction for judicial deference are currently unrecognized. By examining two representative exemption cases, this Article argues that each type of religious claim triggers a distinct concept of deference. Conscience-based claims evoke a strong argument for secondary deference: a constraint from inquiring into religious content within the process of evaluating the primary conscientious claim. This is because conscience is a subjective, personal matter, whose evaluation in terms of content is constitutionally problematic. By contrast, community-based claims protect religious communal autonomy, not a direct conscientious conviction. Thus, they do not evoke this secondary, procedural deference. Rather, these claims call for deference as the manifestation of the religious right. That is, the Court protects the right to autonomy by expressing deference to religion. After establishing this analytical distinction, this Article discusses its normative and doctrinal implications. It demonstrates the detrimental * Post-Doctoral Visiting Scholar, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Fellow, Nootbaar Institute for Law, Religion, and Ethics. I thank Netta Barak-Corren, Yaron Covo, Hanoch Dagan, Adi Goldiner, Roy Kreitner, Barak Medina, Nitsan Plitman, Daniel Statman, Gila Stopler, the Participants of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics Colloquium, the Participants of the Jean Monnet Center Public Law Workshop, and the Participants of the 3rd annual Nootbaar Fellows conference. 1355 4.SCHLESINGER.FIN.NH.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW 6/16/25 8:52 AM 50:5 (2025) consequences of its conflation by the Court, especially in granting religious institutions foreclosing exemptions from anti-discrimination labor law. Finally, this Article proposes a doctrinal alternative: First, courts should recognize the main constitutional value underlying the claim and set the deference baseline. Second, courts should consider how other constitutional values, if any, influence the claim. Despite their analytical distinction, conscience and community considerations are commonly intertwined in practice. Accordingly, this Article’s doctrinal alternative consists of a two-phased approach, sensitive to these possible reciprocal influences. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................. 1357 I.DEFERENCE TO COMMUNITY ........................................................................ 1366 A. The Ministerial Exception ....................................................................1366 B. Church Autonomy and Its Theoretical Basis ....................................1369 1. Theology........................................................................................... 1370 2. Community...................................................................................... 1372 3. Constitutional Institutionalism ...................................................... 1375 C. From Internal Religious Disputes to the Ministerial Exception: Church Autonomy as Deference ........................................................1376 D. Church Autonomy and Deference to Religion .................................1379 II.DEFERENCE TO CONSCIENCE ....................................................................... 1384 .A Complicity Claims: An Emerging Doctrine ......................................1386 B. Deference to Conscience in Precedent: Ballard, Thomas, Smith, and RFRA ...............................................................................................1390 C. Conscience and Its Limits ....................................................................1395 III.DEFERENCE IN PRACTICE : A GENERAL FRAMEWORK .................................. 1398 A. The Ministerial Exception ....................................................................1399 1. Analyzing Deference in the Ministerial Exception Cases............... 1399 2. Limiting Deference in the Communal Context ............................... 1401 B. The Communal Imaginary Routes of Complicity ............................1404 1. Deference (and Community) in Hobby Lobby ................................ 1404 2. Limiting Conscience on Communal Grounds? ............................... 1407 C. Differentiation Without Dichotomy: Toward a Theory of Deference................................................................................................1415 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................. 1417 1356 4.SCHLESINGER.FIN.NH.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 1357 6/16/25 8:52 AM Judicial Deference to Religious Claims INTRODUCTION Since Employment Division v. Smith,1 American constitutional law renders no obligation, under the religion clause of the First Amendment, to accommodate generally applicable laws for religious needs. While the current U.S. Supreme Court is avoiding a straightforward overturn of this non-accommodation doctrine, it is continuously increasing the scope of de facto accommodation of general laws based on religious freedom claims.2 This trend is not new. Curtailing Smith began with the subsequent response of Congress enacting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), followed by many State enactments of (...truncated)