It’s no surprise that mainstream news reports about the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling on LGBTQ rights for secular workers included a strong note of celebration. To the victors go the spoils and this was a big win for the cultural left and, one can only assume, the new middle America — as defined by the Harvard and Yale law schools.
The unanswered question hanging over all of this was, of course, the same one that haunted the majority opinion written by Donald Trump’s first choice for the high court. That would be: What happens to the bigots — sexual orientation now equals race — in churches, synagogues, mosques, etc., who run schools and nonprofit organizations built on centuries of premodern doctrine? After all, it’s hard to tolerate religious believers who are intolerant.
It’s also important, of course, to ask whether grieving believers on the religious and cultural right will stay home during the 2020 elections since they can no longer say, “But the Supreme Court” when justifying votes for the Tweeter In Chief.
Expect waves of coverage of that in the days ahead, of course.
Political wars vs. religion news? No contest.
What matters the most, to readers in middle America, is how this story was covered by the Associated Press. In this case, AP stuck close to the political and legal angles of the decision, with little or no interpretation from activists on the left, the right or in the middle.
In other words, this was not a story in which First Amendment content was crucial. So there. The headline: “Supreme Court says gay, transgender workers protected by law.” Here’s the overture:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a landmark civil rights law protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination in employment, a resounding victory for LGBT rights from a conservative court.
The court decided by a 6-3 vote that a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, encompasses bias against people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court. “Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.”
The First Amendment angle did surface way down in the body of the story — past the point where the text will be cut in many small newspapers in the heartland. I expect that we will see a hard-news story or two and waves of commentary from the new team of the Associated Press, Religion News Service and The Conversation.
On the secular side of things, watch for discussions of the future of women’s athletics and the status of bathrooms and showers at public schools, gyms and health clubs from coast to coast. This decision will, I imagine, receive better reviews in California than Texas. It will draw cheers in most of Manhattan, as opposed to some zip codes in the other boroughs.
Here is that chunk of the AP story, including the religion-angle sentence.
… Monday’s decision is not likely to be the court’s last word on a host of issues revolving around LGBT rights, Gorsuch noted.
Rights groups have said they will challenge the administration’s effort to roll back anti-discrimination protections for transgender people in health care. Lawsuits are pending over transgender athletes’ participation in school sporting events, and courts also are dealing with cases about sex-segregated bathrooms and locker rooms, a subject that the justices seemed concerned about during arguments in October. Employers who have religious objections to employing LGBT people also might be able to raise those claims in a different case, Gorsuch said.
“But none of these other laws are before us; we have not had the benefit of adversarial testing about the meaning of their terms, and we do not prejudge any such question today,” he wrote.
On the elite side of things, it is interesting that both The New York Times and The Washington Post turned to religion writers for stories about the long-game questions focusing on the First Amendment. I say, “Hurrah” for that news decision.
Here is the Washington Post feature: “Christian conservatives rattled after Supreme Court rules against LGBT discrimination.”
Meanwhile, here’s the New York Times sidebar, which ran with this epic headline: “Conservative Christians See ‘Seismic Implications’ in Supreme Court Ruling — A ruling that protects the rights of gay and transgender workers could impact how conservative groups operate their own institutions.”
As you would expect, this turns into a Religious Right vs. religious situation — once again raising the question of whether it is possible to find a middle ground in American culture on matters of religion and the law.
Here’s a tip for news readers: In the days ahead, watch for references to the “Utah Compromise.” That term refers to legislation in Utah — brokered by LGBTQ activists and legal pros linked to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — that attempted to protect LGBTQ citizens, while also protecting the First Amendment rights of religious groups to act on their doctrines (as opposed to simply meditating on them behind closed sanctuary doors).
If you want to see how activists on the left and the right tend to react to this, scan the often hot contents of this online search file. Once again, will the new America tolerate traditional forms of religion?
The big question: Is Gorsuch (an Episcopalian), or perhaps Chief Justice Roberts (a Catholic), attempting to create a Utah Compromise — with this decision serving as the first half of the equation?
Here is the one section of the Times piece that hints at this crucial issue:
For religious conservatives, the ruling was especially pointed because it came from a bench that leans conservative, and because Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, whom they had championed as a hero for other causes like abortion, wrote for the majority. Unlike the 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide during the Obama administration, this ruling came from their allies.
In his opinion, Justice Gorsuch recognized the existence of several religious freedom protections, including the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that recognized a “ministerial exception” in employment discrimination laws.
But he signaled that Monday’s decision could lead to a fight over the validity over those protections. “How these doctrines protecting religious liberty interact with Title VII are questions for future cases too,” he wrote.
That 2012 ruling? That was the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC case.
For those with short memories, that was a 9-0 decision in favor of religious liberty.
Stay tuned. And watch for this word — “Utah.”