Northwestern University School of Law Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons Faculty Working Papers 2012 Religion and the Equal Protection Clause Steven G. Calabresi Northwestern University School of Law, [email protected] Abe Salander Repository Citation Calabresi, Steven G. and Salander, Abe, "Religion and the Equal Protection Clause" (2012). Faculty Working Papers. Paper 213. http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/facultyworkingpapers/213 This Working Paper is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Working Papers by an authorized administrator of Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. Calabresi and Salander RELIGION AND THE EQUAL PROTECTION CLAUSE By Steven G. Calabresi1 and Abe Salander2 INTRODUCTION......................................................................................................................... 2 I. THE ORIGINAL MEANING OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT ...................... 13 A. THE TEXT AND STRUCTURE OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT .............................................................. 14 B. THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT’S BAN ON CASTE AND CLASS LEGISLATION .......................................... 29 1. Definition of “caste” and “class legislation” .......................................................................................... 29 2. Historical evidence of opposition to class legislation ............................................................................. 33 II. RELIGION AND THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT ................................................ 60 A. RELIGION AS A CASTE .................................................................................................................................... 60 B. RELIGION AS A CLASS .................................................................................................................................... 64 C. THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT AUTOMATICALLY PROTECTS GROUPS WITH POLITICAL RIGHTS ................. 70 D. HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS EQUALITY IN AMERICA ............................................................................................ 76 1. Historical persecution of religion and the founders’ response .............................................................. 78 2. State constitutions and court cases prior to 1868 ................................................................................... 81 3. Religion and Abolition ............................................................................................................................. 85 4. Recognizing the need to protect religion ................................................................................................. 89 E. FOREIGN CONSTITUTIONS AND LAWS GUARANTEEING EQUALITY ................................................................ 95 III. CLASS LEGISLATION AND MODERN CASE LAW ................................................. 98 A. CLASS LEGISLATION DOCTRINE .................................................................................................................. 98 B. MODERN CASE LAW AND CLASS LEGISLATION ........................................................................................ 105 C. CAROLENE PRODUCTS FOOTNOTE FOUR AND RELIGION .......................................................................... 111 IV. THE FREE EXERCISE AND ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSES AFTER THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT ............................................................................................ 118 A. FREE EXERCISE CLAUSE ............................................................................................................................ 119 B. ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE .......................................................................................................................... 136 V. THE BLAINE AMENDMENTS ..................................................................................... 146 A. THE HISTORY OF THE BLAINE AMENDMENTS .............................................................................................. 147 B. THE SUPREME COURT AND THE BLAINE AMENDMENTS .............................................................................. 152 C. BLAINE AMENDMENTS CONSTITUTE CLASS LEGISLATION ......................................................................... 156 D. THE COUNTERARGUMENT OF THE BLAINE AMENDMENTS .......................................................................... 160 VI. THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM ................................................................................ 162 A. DISCRIMINATION ON THE BASIS OF RELIGION .............................................................................................. 162 B. EDUCATION MONOPOLY ................................................................................................................................ 176 C. THE SOLUTION: ENDORSE PLURALISM ......................................................................................................... 187 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................... 192 1 Class of 1940 Research Professor of Law, Northwestern University. Copyright 2012—all rights reserved. 2 JD 2012 Northwestern University School of Law. We dedicate this article to Professors Michael W. McConnell and Akhil Reed Amar from both of whom we have learned so much about religious liberty. We would like to thank Stephen Presser for his helpful suggestions and comments and our research librarian Pegeen Bassett for her enormous help with this project. 1 Calabresi and Salander Statement of the Supreme Court in 1895: ―Whenever a distinction is made in the burdens a law imposes or in the benefits it confers on any citizens by reason of their birth, or wealth, or religion, it is class legislation, and leads inevitably to oppression and abuses, and to general unrest and disturbance in society. It was hoped and believed that the great amendments to the Constitution which followed the late civil war had rendered such legislation impossible for all future time.‖ Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.3 Introduction Ask anyone whether the Constitution permits discrimination on the basis of religion, and the response will undoubtedly be no. Yet the modern Supreme Court has not recognized that the anti-discrimination command of the Fourteenth Amendment protects religion in the same way that the Amendment protects against discrimination on the basis of race or gender. In fact, the Supreme Court has permitted the legislature to facially discriminate against religion in funding programs.4 To make matters worse, thirty-seven state constitutions and the District of Columbia‘s Code openly discriminate on the basis of religion in so-called Blaine amendments.5 The exclusion of religion from the Fourteenth Amendment‘s anti-discrimination command is all the more remarkable because the Supreme Court has used the Amendment‘s anti- discrimination command to protect a wide variety of groups – most of whom are never mentioned elsewhere in the text of the Constitution. The Supreme Court has relied on the Amendment‘s anti-discrimination command to strike down classifications based on gender, 6 3 157 U.S. 429, 596, (1895) superseded by constitutional amendment, CONST. AMEND. XVI, as recognized in South Carolina v. Baker, 485 U.S. 505 (1988). 4 See Locke v. Davey, 540 U.S. 712 (2004) (permitting a state to withhold scholarship money from individuals seeking a religious education, even though it provided scholarships to individuals seeking a secular education). 5 Kyle Duncan, Comment, Secularism's Laws: State Blaine Amendments and Religious Persecution, 72 Fordham L. Rev. 493 (2003) (counting so-called ―Blaine Amendments‖); D.C. CODE § 44-715 (2012). 6 Craig v. Boren , 429 U.S. 190 (1976); Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973); United States v. Virginia (The VMI Case), 518 U.S. 515 (1996). 2 Calabresi and Salander illegitimacy,7 physical disability,8 alienage,9 citizenship,10 and sexual orientation.11 And in Skinner v. State of Oklahoma, the Supreme Court used the Fourteenth Amendment‘s anti- discrimination command to strike down a statute compelling sterilization for larceny but not embezzlement.12 Although the Supreme Court once restricted its equal protection doctrine to ―discrete and insular minorities,‖13 it has recently extended equal protection rights to whites, limiting affirmative action programs and other efforts to aid racial minorities.14 Most recently, the Ninth Circuit used the Fourteenth Amendment‘s anti-discrimination command to strike down California‘s Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriages.15 Curiously, the Supreme Court has not granted the same anti-discrimination protection to religion despite explicit suggestions in the text of the Constitution itself that religion ought to always be treated as a suspect class. We think this outcome is clearly wrong. The Supreme Court‘s current view is that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment granted equal protection to groups that lacked civil or political rights in 1787 (racial minorities), as well as to groups that lacked civil and political rights in 1787 and 1868 but who would gain those rights in the future (e.g., women, immigrants, gays and lesbians), yet the Fourteenth Amendment denied equal protection to groups that did 7 Weber v. Aetna Casualty & Surety Co., 406 U.S. 164 (1972); Gomez v. Perez, 409 U.S. 535 (1973);