Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is your
program, bringing you news,
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views, updates, and
discussion, and analyses
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of religious
liberty developments
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in the US and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
Editor of Liberty magazine.
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And my guest on the program
is attorney, Alan Reinach,
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Executive Director
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of the Church State
Council in California,
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based in California.
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And the fact that
you're an attorney
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leads directly into
what I want to talk about.
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Sure.
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You know, the law is a big part
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of our lives in
the modern world.
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And I'm reminded in
the gospel dispensation,
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you know, the Apostle Paul
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changed the world on
behalf of Christianity,
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but he appealed to
the law time after time
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his citizenship status, right?
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So it seems to me,
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it's a legitimate aspect
of living a life of faith
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in the modern world that...
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We use the law when we
can to defend what it offers,
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particularly in
the United States,
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protection for
religious practice.
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Now is this a big
part or a big problem
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in the United States
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defending people's
religious sensibilities,
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probably mostly
in the workplace?
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You know, I don't know
what most Americans think of
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when they think of
religious liberty problems.
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Maybe they think of,
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you know, the baker
and the photographer,
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and that sort of thing
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or maybe they think of
Ten Commandments monument,
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and, you know, crosses on hills,
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and the battles,
those sorts of things.
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But you know, the cases
that don't get the publicity.
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The number one
religious freedom problem
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in America today
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and for many years has
been every business day,
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Americans are losing their jobs
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for no other
crime than their faith.
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Now it's not just
Seventh-day Adventists.
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You and I are
Seventh-day Adventists.
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And you, I know,
defend many Adventists,
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but this wouldn't be just
a problem of accommodation
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for Adventists.
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No, it's not at all.
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I can think of a
few others, Jews,
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Muslims have faith for example.
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But every...
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People of any faith
can suffer discrimination.
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You know, it's true.
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I started out
primarily representing
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Seventh-day Adventists
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with Sabbath
accommodation problems
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because of our belief and
practice of taking the time
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from sundown
Friday to sundown Saturday
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is a day of rest and worship
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and not working on those hours
and being pretty strict about,
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you know, not working,
it causes a lot of conflict,
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especially for blue
collar-hourly-wage workers.
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People can't
change their job at will.
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They don't have the flexibility.
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But we've developed
the Church State Council
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into the foremost
legal services organization
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providing representation
for people of all faiths.
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So for example, let me
tell you a story about a case
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that was not a
Seventh-day Adventist.
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And I can tell it
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because it was a case
against a government entity,
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and when you settle
cases against the government,
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because it's a government,
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they can't have these
nondisclosure agreements.
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There's no confidentiality.
I didn't know that.
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I'm not going to use names,
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you know, but at
least I can talk.
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So it's in the public record.
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Yeah, it's a
public record, sure.
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So our client was a
very lovely gentleman,
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African-American, Baptist.
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And his dad had started a church
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in Oakland, California.
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He had many years
of federal service
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in the military and otherwise,
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and he decided when
the real estate business
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he was in collapsed back in,
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you know, 2009,
2010, he took a position,
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very humble position,
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as a custodian
for a national park
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on the ocean
there in San Francisco,
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right by Pier 39 for those
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who are familiar
with the city at all.
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I've been to Pier 39 myself
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and I'm not
familiar with the city.
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He encountered not
only pervasive harassment
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and discrimination
on the basis of race,
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but then the thing
that got him fired,
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he had befriended one
of the homeless people
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that came to visit the park
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and eventually the gentleman
was no longer homeless.
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You know, he
had a place to live,
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but he still came
to visit the park.
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And he asked my
client to be baptized,
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and so he got very excited,
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he said, "You know, wait
till the end of my shift."
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And at the end of his shift...
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He took his
lunch break at the end
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instead of during the middle,
changed out of his uniform,
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took him down to
the ocean, baptized him.
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He got fired
over that. Incredible.
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We had a federal agency
then defending this case.
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You know, they
eventually settled it,
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but defending it saying,
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"We did nothing
wrong by firing him."
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They didn't deny
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that he was
fired over the baptism
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'cause there was a
whole paper trail about it.
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What was the reason
given for his firing though?
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How did he
offend the supervisor?
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Look, it was
probably just pure bigotry,
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race and religious bigotry.
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That's probably
what was really going on.
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They tried to defend it
as somehow he would be...
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People who would
see him were at risk
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of some kind of
endorsement of religion.
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Well, first of
all, he's had a uniform,
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so how many people
are going to recognize
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that he is the
custodian there anyway?
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And they admitted
deposition testimony that,
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"Well, it was perfectly legal
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for him to do
it on his day off."
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So how did they
know if he was working
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or if he's on his day off?
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You know, you go
down to the beach there
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and there's lots of people doing
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all kinds of
things on the beach,
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and this is San
Francisco after all, you know?
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And nobody's
paying any attention.
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My son's
girlfriend, we had a baptism
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at the beach down in
Malibu a couple years ago.
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And we had a loud speaker,
you know, so we could hear,
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you know, the
service and what have you.
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And I'm looking around
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while the preacher
is introducing things,
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and he's preaching,
he's reading from the Bible.
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I'm looking around.
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There isn't a soul on the beach
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that's paying a lick
of attention, you know?
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Interesting.
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So it was absurd that
there was any kind of fear
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that this lowly...
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that anyone is going to
look at this lowly custodian.
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And imagine,
because he's baptizing
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somebody in the ocean...
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First of all, what's a baptism?
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They're going down in
the water and coming back up.
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And does anybody even...
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They're not
singing, they're not praying,
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they're not doing
anything to publicize it.
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Just a private prayer. Right.
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You know, the
idea that this would be
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an endorsement of religion
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by the United States government,
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this lowly
African-American custodian
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is just ludicrous.
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You know, but I tell that
story just as an illustration
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that religious discrimination
can happen to anybody
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and to everybody.
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It doesn't matter
whether you're a majority faith,
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minority faith.
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You know, we talk
about, for example,
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laws against discrimination
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on the base of
sexual orientation.
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Guess what, gays
are not the only people
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who have a sexual orientation,
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you and I have a
sexual orientation,
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it's not the same, you know?
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Yeah, it's true.
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As a gay person, you know...
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So anybody can be
discriminated against.
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And we found as we have
gotten the experience and grown
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that we're
getting calls for help
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from across the board
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from Muslims being
harassed, from Jews,
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from, you know,
Christians of other faiths,
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we've got some...
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those not working on
Sunday, and of course,
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still predominantly, a
lot of Seventh-day Adventists
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with Sabbath problems.
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And it seems to me...
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I don't know whether the numbers
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of this sort of
thing have gone up.
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But the types of
cases are bureaucratic.
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And I just wonder
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is the
litigious nature of the US
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has made employers fearful
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of any sort of
activity like this
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and then they just
sort of jumping on it
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because it's obvious
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that 50-60 years ago or further,
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so let's say 100 years ago,
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religious activity
of employees informally
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in the workplace
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wouldn't have got
anyone's attention very much.
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But since, you know...
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at the drop of a hat, people...
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maybe even the
Government in this case
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and others just
don't want any trouble,
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so they're sort of
pushing it away reflexly
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where they might not
have done that before.
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Do you think
there's an element of that?
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I think there's
certain hostility
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to religion that we see...
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I don't know that I would...
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That has
developed too. Government.
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No, not by government.
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The government
happens to be with employee.
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Most of our cases
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are private
employers, are not...
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You know, we do have
some government cases.
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But again, it's
people who are harassing,
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it's people who
are discriminating,
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you know, they're in
positions of authority
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within the
government or within companies,
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but it's people, you know?
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We may yet have
to file another case
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against Federal Express.
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Well, we've had some previously.
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Federal Express has policies
00:10:14.81\00:10:17.38
like all these companies
do against discrimination,
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but it's people who are
failing to follow the policies.
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Yeah. And it's true.
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Tolerance in our
society for everything,
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including
religion is at a low point.
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The battle lines
are drawn very quickly.
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And if people get up in arms,
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and they don't
like what's going on
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or they're frosty
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about some
criticism of their actions...
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I'm sure this is feeding
through into more litigation
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on Sabbath, in our
case, accommodation.
00:10:48.78\00:10:51.75
Well, you know,
part of this story,
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when it comes to
the Civil Rights Act
00:10:53.82\00:10:56.58
and the national protections
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we have against
religious discrimination
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in our laws has to be
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a faulty view
00:11:05.93\00:11:09.53
of the separation
of church and state,
00:11:09.56\00:11:11.93
of the Establishment Clause.
00:11:11.97\00:11:13.57
The first case that
went to the Supreme Court
00:11:13.60\00:11:16.54
back in the 1970s,
that was decided...
00:11:16.57\00:11:21.31
it was applying the
obligation to accommodate
00:11:21.34\00:11:26.01
the religious
practices of employees
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and involved a mechanic
for a TWA, remember TWA?
00:11:27.98\00:11:32.72
Hardison. Hardison. Correct.
00:11:32.75\00:11:35.56
TWA against Hardison.
00:11:35.59\00:11:37.89
And one of the
arguments made on behalf of TWA
00:11:37.93\00:11:42.43
was that having special rules
to accommodate people of faith
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was an
establishment of religion.
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This violated
the First Amendment.
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And the Supreme
Court did not go back far,
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but they watered
down the obligation.
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It was...
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The statute reads
that company's employers
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have to provide
reasonable accommodation
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short of an undue hardship.
00:12:07.72\00:12:09.49
Well, the court
watered down undue hardship
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and deprived to
practically nothing.
00:12:11.79\00:12:14.40
Dominimus. Dominimus. Exactly.
00:12:14.43\00:12:16.56
Dominimous which
means pretty much bogus.
00:12:16.60\00:12:18.57
Nothing. Right.
00:12:18.60\00:12:20.14
Now we have been
successful in California
00:12:20.17\00:12:23.20
and in a couple of other states
00:12:23.24\00:12:25.21
at adopting a different standard
00:12:25.24\00:12:27.91
that was first
done with the Americans
00:12:27.94\00:12:30.35
With Disabilities Act,
00:12:30.38\00:12:32.18
which is a
significant difficulty
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or expense
standard of undue hardship,
00:12:34.72\00:12:37.32
and we've been
pushing for two decades
00:12:37.35\00:12:39.45
to get this standard
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written into Title
7 at the federal level
00:12:40.89\00:12:44.03
and neither party has been
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especially helpful
in pushing this forward.
00:12:45.43\00:12:50.27
We might have
discussed it in the past.
00:12:50.30\00:12:52.70
But I think what's
getting in the way more and more
00:12:52.73\00:12:55.34
is this tilt by
the Supreme Court
00:12:55.37\00:12:57.51
to recognizing the rights
00:12:57.54\00:12:59.11
and writing them
large for corporations.
00:12:59.14\00:13:02.18
A corporate, I think,
goes against individual rights.
00:13:02.21\00:13:05.01
And as well as that, I
have heard, in particular,
00:13:05.05\00:13:08.92
the Roman
Catholic Church stating,
00:13:08.95\00:13:12.19
from a legitimate point,
00:13:12.22\00:13:13.56
but I don't like to hear
it in view of what's happening
00:13:13.59\00:13:16.22
with the civil
idea of corporations,
00:13:16.26\00:13:18.36
they stated that there
needs to be less fixation
00:13:18.39\00:13:22.30
on individual's
conscience rights
00:13:22.33\00:13:24.70
and more on corporate
rights for the church.
00:13:24.73\00:13:26.94
This corporate
thinking bothers me.
00:13:26.97\00:13:29.24
Well, there's no question
00:13:29.27\00:13:30.61
that we have always had a
bias in our laws that favors...
00:13:30.64\00:13:34.51
Oh, absolutely, this
was founded on corporate,
00:13:34.54\00:13:37.18
was settled with corporations
before independence.
00:13:37.21\00:13:41.38
And yeah, there is an imbalance
in favor of the corporations,
00:13:41.42\00:13:46.55
like I say,
00:13:46.59\00:13:47.92
some of our state
laws in California.
00:13:47.96\00:13:49.56
We've made enormous headway
00:13:49.59\00:13:52.33
in crafting a set of laws
00:13:52.36\00:13:56.10
that really does
provide vigorous protection
00:13:56.13\00:13:58.90
for people of
faith in the workplace.
00:13:58.93\00:14:02.30
I'll tell you the nut
00:14:02.34\00:14:04.11
that we need to crack right now,
00:14:04.14\00:14:05.84
and we're on the verge of
cracking it in California,
00:14:05.87\00:14:09.21
has to do with
what can employers ask
00:14:09.24\00:14:13.18
in the hiring process.
00:14:13.21\00:14:15.28
When you ask about availability,
00:14:15.32\00:14:17.45
and increasingly,
00:14:17.49\00:14:18.82
there are online
job applications...
00:14:18.85\00:14:20.72
Trying to filter it
before you even offer them...
00:14:20.76\00:14:22.09
If you're not...
00:14:22.12\00:14:23.46
If you don't say
00:14:23.49\00:14:24.83
you're available
seven days a week,
00:14:24.86\00:14:26.19
you don't even...
00:14:26.23\00:14:27.56
you just get bounced out
of the application process.
00:14:27.60\00:14:28.93
It's a very important
aspect. Let's come back to that.
00:14:28.96\00:14:31.17
Let's take a short
break and come back
00:14:31.20\00:14:33.37
and we'll discuss
why is that, perhaps,
00:14:33.40\00:14:35.70
people are being prescreened
before the job is even offered
00:14:35.74\00:14:39.14
where they might have
religious accommodation issues.
00:14:39.17\00:14:42.14
Stay with us.
00:14:42.18\00:14:43.51