What's on the agenda for journalism about religion in the United States in 2021 and beyond?

Ongoing fights about the First Amendment and religious liberty are likely to prove the most newsworthy, but two other themes deserve attention.

A prior Religion Guy Memo here at GetReligion surveyed the competing partisan concepts of "religious freedom" that face the United States and the incoming Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration, with potential for big conflicts if Democrats win both Senate runoffs in Georgia.

One aspect is religious groups' desire to be exempt from anti-discrimination laws so they can hire doctrinally like-minded employees, while qualifying for federal grants. Lame duck Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia (son of the late Supreme Court justice) wrapped up the Donald Trump years with an important "final rule" to nail down and clarify exemption rights. It goes into effect a dozen days before Biden's inauguration.

Understandably, much news like this was all but ignored by media focused on COVID-19developments and President Trump's remarkable, fruitless efforts to erase the 2020 election returns, supported at the U.S. Supreme Court by 60 percent of House Republicans and the GOP attorneys general of 18 states.

Labor's “final rule” policies could be re-examined in the Biden years. The huge text (.pdf here) provides journalists full documentation on religious employment disputes as seen from the conservative side of the culture wars, and summarizes 109,000 officially filed comments pro and con.

The rule clarifies that exempt groups need not be connected to specific house of worship (as with many schools and Protestant "parachurch" organizations) and that even for-profit companies can qualify if they have "a substantial religious purpose." It states that "religion" covers not only creedal beliefs but "all aspects of religious observance and practice." The rule allows exemptions of religious groups that provide "secular" help, relying on the 9th Circuit appeals ruling in Spencer v. World Vision (read text here).

Importantly, Labor's new rule says religious organizations cannot ignore anti-discrimination protections regarding "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" in situations where "there is no religious basis for the action."