By Gregory Curfman and Holly Fernandez Lynch [A quick follow up to our recent NEJM Perspective on the case, with I. Glenn Cohen] Immediately after Justice Samuel Alito’s announcement on June 30 of the majority opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court took further actions on the contraceptive mandate, and both supporters and opponents…
By I. Glenn Cohen, Holly Fernandez Lynch, and Gregory Curfman Check out the “hot off the press” New England Journal of Medicine Perspectives piece “When Religious Freedom Clashes with Access to Care” by Petrie-Flom Faculty Director I. Glenn Cohen, Executive Director Holly Fernandez Lynch, and NEJM Executive Editor (and PFC Faculty Affiliate), Gregory Curfman. We review the…
By Nadia N. Sawicki Did HHS shoot itself in the foot by providing an accommodation to religious non-profits? In holding that the contraceptive mandate imposed by HHS on Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood was not the “least restrictive alternative” for providing no-cost contraceptive coverage to women, the Supreme Court pointed to the accommodation HHS recently provided…
By Nadia N. Sawicki Courts evaluating First Amendment and RFRA claims have long held that they are in no position to evaluate the validity, centrality, or reasonableness of a claimant’s sincere religious beliefs. And while there is room for courts to evaluate whether a claimant’s beliefs are indeed “sincere,” many courts shy away from doing so…
By Wendy Parmet At first glance, last Thursday’s decisions by the Supreme Court in McCullen v. Coakley and the New York Court of Appeals in New York Statewide Coalition of Hispanic Chambers of Commerce v. New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, have little in common. McCullen, which struck down a Massachusetts law…
By Dov Fox The U.S. Supreme Court has not in recent years held the views of the American Psychological Association (APA) in so high regard as it did this week. In 2012, the Court set aside the APA’s arguments for why due process requires the exclusion of eyewitness testimony obtained under suggestive circumstances that rendered it especially likely to…
For more information, visit the conference website.
Join us at Northeastern University School of Law at 1 p.m. on April 25, 2014 as leading academics and practitioners discuss the tensions between free speech and reproductive rights. For more information, see https://www.northeastern.edu/law/academics/institutes/health-law/events/clashing-rights/
By Katherine L. Record Last week the Supreme Court attracted lots of attention when it heard arguments about whether a corporation can exclude mandatory preventive benefits from its employee health plan, based on a religious objection to certain types of healthcare. This is a tale as old as time; religion has long been the basis…
By Holly Fernandez Lynch Just a quick pointer to an interesting new article out by Kara Loewentheil at Yale, When Free Exercise Is a Burden: Protecting ‘Third Parties’ in Religious Accommodation Law. Here’s her abstract (posted a few weeks ago before cert was granted): As of November 2013, over 60 lawsuits have been filed under…
