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35 Law & Phil. 1 (2016)

handle is hein.journals/lwphil35 and id is 1 raw text is: Law and Philosophy (2016) 35:1-28 © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015 DOI 10.1007/s10982-015-9246-9 CrossMark KEVIN VALLIER THE MORAL BASIS OF RELIGIOUS EXEMPTIONS* (Accepted 24 September 2015) ABSTRACT. Justifying religious exemptions is a complicated matter. Citizens ask to not be subject to laws that everyone else must follow, raising worries about equal treatment. They ask to be exempted on a religious basis, a basis that secular citizens do not share, raising worries about the equal treatment of secular and religious citizens. And they ask governmental structures to create exceptions in the government's own laws, raising worries about procedural fairness and stability. We nonetheless think some religious exemptions are appropriate, and in some cases, that exemptions are morally required. So how are we to determine when religious exemptions are justified? This article employs a public reason framework to provide an answer. I show how to publicly justify religious exemptions. My thesis is that a citizen merits a religious exemption under four conditions: (a) if she has sufficient intelligible reason to oppose the law, (b) if the law imposes unique and substantial burdens on the integrity of those exempted that are not off-set by comparable benefits, (c) if the large majority of citizens have sufficient reason to endorse the law, and (d) if the exempted group does not impose significant costs on other parties that require redress. If these conditions are met, then legislative and/or judicial bodies should carve out an exemption for those requesting them. Religious exemptions are big news in the United States, due largely to the Health and Human Services contraception mandate and the gradual legalization of gay marriage. Little Sisters of the Poor, a religious order devoted to hospice care, has requested an exemption both from financing contraception for their employees and from authorizing a third-party to do the same. Hobby Lobby, a nation- * For helpful remarks on the paper, I thank Chad Van Schoelandt, Micah Schwartzman, Andy Koppelman, Ben Bryan, Jerry Gaus, John Thrasher, two anonymous referees, and a number of attendees at the 2015 Religion and Political Theory conference at University College London.

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