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Article: The politics of a second class right: free exercise in contemporary America.(Symposium: A Second-Class Constitutional Right? Free Exercise and the Current State of Religious Freedom in the United States)
- Article from:
- Albany Law Review
- Article date:
- September 22, 2007
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2007 Albany Law School. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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I want to begin with a few comments on the title of today's symposium. It strikes me that there are at least three reasons why free exercise of religion is a "second class right" in our own particular period of American history. The first, of course, is that this right was essentially written out of the Constitution by the Supreme Court in Smith v. Employment Division. To put it plainly, I believe that the decision in that case effectively repealed the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution rendering it, at best, a second class right. We have no right to the free exercise of religion at this moment, unless that exercise exists in tandem with ...