Title: Religion and the Supreme Court
Headings: Religion and the Supreme Court
Religion and the Supreme Court
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The Constitutional Ceiling and Floor
Free Exercise
The Establishment clause
Does Supreme Court Case Law Allow…
Religious Freedom Restoration Act

Content: As our governmental system is generally understood, however, Supreme Court decisions on constitutional law cannot be overturned by statute because the Constitution cannot be amended by statute. Furthermore, Congress could not use its enforcement power under the Fourteenth Amendment to impose protections against state laws that are not unconstitutional. For those reasons, the Supreme Court found RFRA to be unconstitutional as applied to the states in 1997. However, it ruled that Congress could pass a statute that provided greater protections than the free exercise clause if its effects were limited to the federal government. RFRA continues to be in effect as applied to the federal government. The Supreme Court confirmed this conclusion in a 2006 case. In 2014, the Supreme Court ruled in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby that closely held, for-profit corporations could object to regulations through RFRA. In that case, the regulation was the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate. Citing the outcome in Hobby Lobby, several federal departments issued regulations allowing moral exemptions from the contraceptive mandate for employers. The c