Substantial controversy has been raised over Indiana’s recently passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which — in essence — openly allows businesses to discriminate against potential customers by citing their right to the “free exercise of religion.” This piece of legislation has caused serious uproar across the nation; pundits, celebrities and politicians alike have denounced the inhumane precedent the RFRA has established and called for its repeal. This law raises pertinent questions about the concept of liberty in the United States; specifically, do businesses truly have the claim to liberties imparted to the individual by the Constitution? At what point do an individual’s rights take precedence over those of a corporation?
In recent history, the Supreme Court has backed the claim that the liberties of businesses should be protected by the Constitution. The Hobby Lobby case of 2014 divisively established in a five to four decision that businesses are indeed entitled to constitutional liberties, as the Court ruled that a for-profit retail corporation has the right to deny contraception to its employees by citing “free exercise.” Because birth control is not a basic human necessity — and thus denying birth control does not necessarily inhibit an individual’s civil rights — this decision may have indeed been rational for the specific case. However, the true power of the Supreme Court lies in its ability to set legal precedents, and the precedent set for businesses to act as quasi-individual religious entities is a dangerous one.
Arguments stemming from the supporters of the RFRA place a great stake in the Hobby Lobby precedent, claiming that the free practice of religion should not be inhibited anywhere on American soil. In other words, they are essentially arguing that the tenets of any particular religion are justifications for discriminatory business practices, or that the leaders of an institution can dig around through their religious texts to find some reason to deny service to an individual. While the extent of the “free exercise” clause is unclear, it can be argued that as soon as religion touches others outside of the sphere of worship, it ceases to be a purely “religious” practice, infringing on the inherent mandate of secularity in this nation. Specifically for Indiana businesses, this infringement on secularity poses serious issues, for what constitutes a religion? And at what point does the denial of service become not only a misuse of “free exercise” but a detriment to the livelihood of the patron?
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued in her dissenting opinion in the Hobby Lobby case that “approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be 'perceived as favoring one religion over another,' the very 'risk the [Constitution's] Establishment Clause was designed to preclude.” Because the idea of “religion” is so inherently abstract, the RFRA has theoretically paved the way for an onset of new religious organizations that can act — and thus can discriminate — in any way they choose. In fact, an Indiana resident named Bill Levin recently started The First Church of Cannabis as a result of this law’s passage, which supports the recreational use of marijuana in a state that restricts marijuana usage entirely.
Furthermore, there is an infinite number of hypothetical situations in which the denial of service based on religious discrimination could cause serious harm to a customer. The RFRA upholds the right of an institution to act in any manner it desires so long as the business does not violate the “compelling interest” of the state, a notion that is hardly defined whatsoever by the legislators who created this law. While ambiguity can often be a legislator’s best friend, there is a point at which discrimination based on religious beliefs passes from the realm of being simply unethical to the realm of outright inhibiting an individual’s right to life. The RFRA fails to accommodate for the fact that many citizens — especially in impoverished communities — do not have multiple options for the goods and services they need in order to survive. Every time a citizen is denied service due to discrimination and does not have the means to obtain that service somewhere else, the state of Indiana has effectively valued the “freedom” of an institution over the worth of an individual’s life.
An individual’s civil liberties are not contingent on whether an institution deems them worthy; this nation has fought since its inception for individuals’ rights to pursue their personal endeavors without unjust interference, a tenet that has expanded to nearly every demographic in the country in the past 50 years. Institutions should not be able to deny the right to life of citizens at their own discretion, and although in certain instances businesses should have some individual rights, those rights should never take precedence over the constitutionally-mandated civil liberties of the individual.
Ryan Gorman is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at r.gorman@cavalierdaily.com.
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