Equal liberty, non-establishment and religious freedom 1

Abstract

in the early 1960s, a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Adell Sherbert, was denied unemployment compensation on the grounds that no 'good cause' justified her unwillingness to comply with her employer's demand that she, like other employees, accept Saturday work. The US Supreme Court reversed the lower court's decision, and found that denying Sherbert's compensation claim violated her rights to religious freedom. Sherbert v. Verner (1963) became a landmark case in the constitutionalisation of religious freedom. Consider, however, two different ways in which Sherbert's religious freedom claim could be justified. On the one hand, one could say (as the Court in fact said) that to condition Sherbert's access to benefit on her willingness to violate a cardinal principle of her faith would be unduly to penalize and burden her rights of religious freedom. On this view, Sherbert has a pro tanto claim to practice her religion freely (absent a compelling state interest). On the other hand, one could say that denying compensation would entail unjustly discriminating against Sherbert who, unlike similarly situated workers, faces an unfair dilemma: either complying with the job's requirements or obeying the demands of her faith (and losing her claim to compensation). On this view, Sherbert has a comparative claim to be treated on fair, equal terms with others. This second justification draws on what I propose to call an egalitarian

Laborde, liberalism, and religion

“…In the recent literature, the dominant liberal response to these questions is based on an egalitarian theory of religion, according to which "religion need not be singled out in the liberal state" (Laborde 2017: 13; see also Laborde 2014). The roots of the liberal egalitarian view on religion can be found in the work of John Rawls (1971 and1993), as well as Ronald Dworkin (2013), Christopher Eisgruber and Lawrence Sager (2007), Jocelyn Maclure and Charles Taylor (2011).…”