Among the first search results for Kamala Harris’ position on religious liberties, one will find her commitment to the First Amendment, but curiously, it is tied to “reproductive freedom.”
“As extremists work to take away the freedom of women to make decisions about their own bodies, faith leaders are taking a stand, knowing one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held religious beliefs to agree that a woman should have the ability to make decisions about her own body and not have her government tell her what to do,” writes an MSNBC religion contributor.
With such a deficient view of what religious liberty means, it is not surprising that this administration has sought to limit the rights of religious organizations, and has enabled and encouraged intrusive and costly litigation against them. A Harris-Walz Administration will only further harm religious liberties in this country.
For many years, I have worked with the Becket Fund For Religious Liberty to have the courts recognize the true scope of the ministerial exception that is critical to the functioning of religious institutions. In 2012, in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & Sch. v. E.E.O.C, the Supreme Court held that a ministerial exception protects churches’ autonomy to select and control key religious personnel. In 2020, in Our Lady of Guadalupe Sch. v. Morrissey-Berru, the Supreme Court rooted this commitment to religious autonomy in the First Amendment’s protection of “the right of religious institutions to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church
