Religious Exemptions Exercise -Reply

[Daniel Conkle]

Rick Duncan asks:

Dan, exactly what was the compelling interest your students
identified? Did they simply assert that the state has a compelling
interest in eradicating this kind of discrimination? Or did they at
least try to talk about housing shortages and the difficulty of
finding a place in which to cohabit?

Response:  The issue of other available housing certainly was
discussed, but most of the students rejecting the landlady's claim
argued that this didn't really matter, and some suggested that the
landlady herself has another alternative -- removing herself from the
business of renting apartments (an argument discussed on this list in
the context of the Mrs. Smith case, I believe).  Some students also
characterized the controversy as one involving human rights--or even
matters of conscience--on both sides of the balance.

Rick asks:

If KP duty is seen as an unpleasant work assignment for prisoners,
the state's interest in fairly distributing this kind of work among
prisoners (and thereby avoiding unrest among a dangerous group of
people) seems much stronger than the inconvenience of finding another
apartment when Mrs. Smith refuses to rent to you (I know of no
evidence that establishes that cohabitants are locked out of the
housing market).

Response:  The students *rejecting* the prisoner's claim noted the
potential problems of unfairness and prisoner unrest; the students
*granting* the prisoner's exemption claim did not ignore these
issues, but thought that the prison officials could come up with some
alternative work assignment that was, if anything, even more
unpleasant (in non-religious terms).

Dan Conkle
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Daniel O. Conkle
Professor of Law
Indiana University School of Law
Bloomington, Indiana  47405
(812) 855-4331
e-mail conkle at indiana.edu or
danconkle at law.indiana.edu
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