On July 30, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the creation of a new “religious liberty task force” in the Department of Justice to help litigate more religious freedom cases across the country. According to Sessions, the task force is needed to stop a “dangerous movement” in the United States that aims to strip away the right to practice one’s religion freely. Criticism from liberal groups came immediately, with Louise Melling of the American Civil Liberties Union warning that the initiative “encourages private [religious] groups to discriminate with government funds.”
This criticism is misplaced. The main case that Jeff Sessions cited to support his idea of religious freedom under attack was the recent Supreme Court case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, in which a Christian baker was sued after refusing to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. The court ultimately didn’t decide whether cake decorating is a type of religious expression protected by the First Amendment, but they did rule that government officials cannot show animus to certain religious beliefs in case proceedings.
But even if the court eventually does hand down a broad ruling defending religious liberty for Christian business owners, the marketplace can step up to provide alternatives to LGBT citizens and marginalized communities hurt by private discrimination. This will allow religious individuals to exercise their First Amendment rights without significantly limiting the freedom of others.
What critics of the task force do get right, though, is the concern that the DOJ will fight for the religious liberty of only Christians while ignoring the freedom of other faiths. The religious liberty task force needs to take up cases protecting the freedom of Muslims, Jews, and others with equal zeal. In this way, Sessions and the DOJ can reverse the disturbing trend of religious freedom advocates applying the principle exclusively to one faith.
For many Americans, religious freedom has become synonymous with defending the freedom of Christians above other faiths. A late 2015 study by the Associated Press showed that 82 percent of Americans believe religious freedom is important for Christians, while only 67 percent believed the same was true for Mormons and an even lower 61 percent for Muslims. More recently, a University of Pennsylvania survey suggested that nearly a quarter of Americans “did not believe or did not know” that Muslims are protected by the First Amendment’s guarantee of free religious practice. This fact comes to life when the government targets Muslims.
In a notable case, the New York Police Department spent years spying on Muslim communities with unwarranted surveillance. Lawsuits uncovered that, while the NYPD had not started a single terrorism investigation from their findings, they had spied on mosques, restaurants, and stores that Muslim residents frequented. Sen. Ted Cruz, an outspoken advocate for (supposedly) religious freedom, argued while running for president that the federal government should expand these types of targeted surveillance programs.
This kind of “religious freedom for me, but not for thee” mentality is true among Republicans generally. A survey from the Cato Institute indicated that an appalling 49 percent of Republicans would support a ban on the construction of new mosques.
Some evangelical Christians have refused to extend the religious liberty that they enjoy to other faiths. In May 2016, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, wrote an amicus brief in support of a New Jersey Muslim community that had their plans to build a mosque shut down by their local government. A number of ministers protested the decision and withheld funds from the SBC as a result. ERLC President Russell Moore responded with a staunch defense of religious liberty for all, “When you have a government that says ‘we can decide whether or not a house of worship can be constructed based upon the theological beliefs of that house of worship,’ then there are going to be Southern Baptist churches in San Francisco and New York… who are not going to be able to build [new churches].”
He was right. The fight for religious liberty is, and should remain, intersectional. When a Baptist or Catholic church is able to worship freely, Mormons, Buddhists, and Jews alike benefit. When a Muslim community is able to build a mosque without government bureaucrats stopping them, the freedom of all religious Americans is bolstered. The task force should litigate cases on behalf of any tradition that gets threatened, because a federal government with the power to target smaller faiths could one day turn its laws against Christians.
To their credit, the DOJ acknowledged this idea in a memorandum laying out their guiding religious freedom policies. Among them was the statement that the government “may not officially favor or disfavor particular religious groups.” Many Americans are doing just that when it comes to advocating religious liberty. Sessions and his new task force need to be diligent in broadening the scope of religious freedom litigation and protecting the rights of every faith.
Matt Liles is an international relations student at the University of Texas at Austin and a writer for Young Voices.
