Corporations religious rights and President Donald Trumps executive order on immigration were among the topics of a recent lecture at Congregation Beth Israel in Charlottesville.

About 60 people attended the third and final talk in the Legal Issues and Ethics speaker series Sunday. In this installment, Micah Schwartzman, the Edward F. Howrey Professor of Law at the University of Virginia, spoke on Religious Freedom in the Supreme Court.

Schwartzman attended UVa for his undergraduate studies and for law school. He holds a doctorate in politics from Oxford and clerked for Judge Paul V. Niemeyer of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit.

Schwartzmans lecture contained four sections: corporate religious freedom in relation to providing contraception; religious exceptions to serving LGBTQ customers; Trumps executive orders on immigration and travel for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries; and the nomination of Neil Gorsuch for the U.S. Supreme Court.

The government shall not substantially burden you unless it has a compelling governmental interest, Schwartzman said of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. The government has to have a really powerful reason and the policy it adopts that burdens your practice has to be what courts call the least restrictive means.

The professor then dove into the Hobby Lobby case, which stems from the contraception mandate of the Affordable Care Act. Overarching questions in the case, he said, include the extent of corporations human-like rights and the ramifications for future cases.

Hobby Lobby, a for-profit craft store chain, argued it should not have to pay for employees contraception because doing so would violate the family-owned companys religious beliefs. Hobby Lobby asserted that because corporations are people under the law, the company has the right of religious freedom.

There has been a big debate in this country about whether corporations are people, Schwartzman said. I have to tell you that this debate was lost a long, long time ago, probably in the late 19th century. Corporations are persons for all kinds of purposes The question that were really interested in is, can they have these particular rights: rights to freedom of speech, rights to freedom of religion The Supreme Court said that not only do they count as persons, they count as the kinds of persons that can exercise religious freedom.

Next, Schwartzman discussed corporate religious freedom in the context of gay marriage. In recent years, some businesses across the country have denied service to gay customers, refused to staff gay weddings and fired transgender employees.

Schwartzman said the issue is a natural extension of the Hobby Lobby decision. Hobby Lobbys progeny were a series of cases involving gay marriage and the rights of gay, lesbian and transgender people, he said.

Attendees at Sundays talk expressed concern over the presidents controversial executive orders. After the orders were signed, Schwartzman spoke to members of a Charlottesville mosque who expressed confusion and concern about whether their dual-citizen members would be able to visit family abroad.

Schwartzman argued that the orders violate the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, among other statutes.

The Establishment Clause, if it means anything, says that the government cant treat some religious groups better than others its not allowed to play favorites to engage in preferential treatment between people of different faiths , he said. This order discriminates amongst people in religious crowds. That seems to be [quite clearly] a violation of the Establishment Clause.

Finally, Schwartzman discussed Trumps Supreme Court nominee. He spoke about Gorsuchs educational and legal background, which includes an opinion in the Hobby Lobby case.

This is a very conventional, high-prestige nomination, Schwartzman said. Gorsuch is extremely well-educated. In fact, many people thought that he wouldnt be the pick because he is too well educated Hes a very conservative judge, hes congenial. People who know him like him, including his opponents.

Tom Gutherz, senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel, invited Schwartzman to speak.

We, as a congregation, are fortunate to have many distinguished UVa law faculty among our members, including some who can share their expertise with the larger community and help to advance the conversations we are having among ourselves about some of the issues facing us today as a community and as a nation, Gutherz said in an interview before Sundays talk. The question of how the concept of religious freedom is being shaped by recent court decisions is one of these issues, and Micah Schwartzman is an expert in this field.

Gutherz said Congregation Beth Israel was pleased with the lecture series and hopes to continue such events in the future.

Weve got a few more lectures in the works for the coming months, on diverse topics, he said. Well do another round of Legal Issues next year.

Read this article:

Religious freedom topic of local talk as Congregation Beth Israel wraps up lecture series - The Daily Progress