Asset Details
Do you wish to reserve the book?
FREE EXERCISE LOCHNERISM
Hey, we have placed the reservation for you!
By the way, why not check out events that you can attend while you pick your title.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place the reservation. Kindly try again later.
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
FREE EXERCISE LOCHNERISM
Do you wish to request the book?
FREE EXERCISE LOCHNERISM
Please be aware that the book you have requested cannot be checked out. If you would like to checkout this book, you can reserve another copy
We have requested the book for you!
Your request is successful and it will be processed during the Library working hours. Please check the status of your request in My Requests.
Oops! Something went wrong.
Looks like we were not able to place your request. Kindly try again later.
Journal Article
FREE EXERCISE LOCHNERISM
2015
Overview
In this Article, I identify and critique a phenomenon I call Free Exercise Lochnerism. In promoting corporate religious exemptions from employment and consumer protections, litigants, scholars, and courts are resurrecting Lochner v. New York—a case symbolic of the courts' widely criticized use of freedom of contract to strike down economic regulation at the turn of the last century. Today, in their interpretations of the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, courts replicate the commitment to private ordering and resistance to redistribution that were at the heart of Lochner. While this phenomenon is exemplified by Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, its reach is wider. The comparison to Lochner offers two insights overlooked in contemporary debates over business religious liberty. First, in resisting compliance with antidiscrimination laws, pharmacy regulations, and insurance mandates (most prominently, the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate), businesses make claims more reminiscent of market libertarianism than of religious freedom. In siding with these businesses, courts have begun to incorporate the premises of Lochner into religious liberty doctrine. In the contraceptive mandate litigation in particular, courts—from the trial level to the Supreme Court—defined a businesses right to free exercise of religion by reference to its ability to contract. They postulated private market ordering as a legally and economically neutral baseline and regulation as an unnecessary and unfair redistribution. Second, comparing business religious liberty doctrine to Lochner-era freedom of contract lays bare the implications for the regulatory state beyond contraception and same-sex marriage. While scholars have recognized a link between Lochner and the Free Speech Clause, this Article establishes that free exercise has taken on a similar role with potential to undermine the regulation of business more broadly.
