The United States Constitution : originalism v. living document -- The establishment clause : ally or adversary of religious liberty? -- Religious liberty : the free exercise clause -- Religious freedom as Freedom of Speech -- Religious liberty and the legalization of same-sex marriage -- Religious liberty in the age of LGBTQ rights -- Freedom, equality, discrimination, and involuntary servitude -- Two iconic religious liberty v. anti-discrimination cases -- Photographs, cakes, and pizzas -- Federal government animus toward religion -- Some important victories for religious liberty -- Big government and its danger to freedom -- Concluding remarks on the battle for religious liberty.

In this Article, I provide a comprehensive account of the role of religion in public accommodations laws. I analyze public accommodations statutes across the fifty states, identify their boundaries, and categorize their religious exemptions. In so doing, I interrogate and debunk misconceptions widely held even by legal scholars that: the Civil Rights Act is a representative public accommodations law; anti-discrimination obligations of retail establishments and social service providers are unusual or new; exemptions for religious entities or small businesses are common; and public accommodations laws have as their central aim remedying market exclusion.Part I sets out the basic framework of public accommodations law. For-profit businesses -- the baker, doctor, and wedding venue of ongoing debates over same-sex marriage refusals -- are the prototypical public accommodations. Non-profit religious organizations similarly assume nondiscrimination duties when they serve the public. In what has been a stable public-private divide, the state regulates commercial and quasi-commercial entities in the interest of equality, while granting private associations license to discriminate.Part II demonstrates that public accommodations laws typically do not offer religious exemptions. When exemptions specific to religion exist, they tend to be limited to a narrow range of activities of religious non-profits and to co-religionist favoritism alone. This structure of limited or no religious exemptions remained intact through the decades, but cracks have recently appeared in the façade as states adopted religious exemptions related to sexual orientation (rarely) and marriage (commonly).Part III examines the purposes of public accommodations laws. Whereas proponents of religious exemptions frequently argue that such laws target only pervasive exclusion from the market, the text of the statutes sets out individual and societal interests far broader than material goods and target segregation and subordination within the market as well as exclusion from it. As a matter of textual analysis alone then, courts faced with claims for exemption under state religious freedom restoration acts must weigh exemption against interests in full and equal enjoyment of public life.

This book explores emerging conflicts about religious liberty and discrimination. In point-counterpoint format, it brings together longtime LGBT rights advocate John Corvino and rising conservative thinkers Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis to debate Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRAs), anti-discrimination law, and age-old questions about identity, morality, and society.

Religion has become a charged token in a politics of division. In disputes about faith-based social services, public money for religious schools, the Pledge of Allegiance, Ten Commandments monuments, the theory of evolution, and many other topics, angry contestation threatens to displace America's historic commitment to religious freedom. Part of the problem, the authors argue, is that constitutional analysis of religious freedom has been hobbled by the idea of "a wall of separation" between church and state. That metaphor has been understood to demand that religion be treated far better than other concerns in some contexts, and far worse in others. Sometimes it seems to insist on both contrary forms of treatment simultaneously. Missing has been concern for the fair and equal treatment of religion. In response, the authors offer an understanding of religious freedom called Equal Liberty. Equal Liberty is guided by two principles. First, no one within the reach of the Constitution ought to be devalued on account of the spiritual foundation of their commitments. Second, all persons should enjoy broad rights of free speech, personal autonomy, associative freedom, and private property. Together, these principles are generous and fair to a wide range of religious beliefs and practices. With Equal Liberty as their guide, the authors offer practical, moderate, and appealing terms for the settlement of many hot-button issues that have plunged religious freedom into controversy. Their book calls Americans back to the project of finding fair terms of cooperation for a religiously diverse people, and it offers a valuable set of tools for working toward that end.

Cécile Laborde argues that religion is more than a statement of belief or a moral code. It refers to comprehensive ways of life, theories of justice, modes of association, and vulnerable collective identities. By disaggregating these dimensions, she addresses questions about whether Western secularism and religion can be applied more universally.