Four Court Cases Have Put Religious Liberty on the Defensive—and Jews Should Beware

Examining four recent legal battles in which U.S. courts deemed the religious freedom of various individuals or groups as contingent or easily subordinated to other considerations, Mitchell Rocklin and Howard Slugh detect a worrying tendency “to view religious liberty as a privilege that the majority, at its discretion, may bestow upon the minority.” The first case involves a family-owned pharmacy in Washington state whose religious proprietors, contrary to state regulations, refrained from stocking or dispensing abortifacient drugs. When the Stormans, owners of the pharmacy, took the case to the Supreme Court, it declined to hear it. Rocklin and Slugh write: