No, he is not. A law or ruling that grant rights to religious believers not attainable by the non-religious is in direct contradiction to the current reigning interpretation of the first amendment.

"but also prohibits government actions that unduly favor one religion over another. It also prohibits the government from unduly preferring religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion."

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/establishment_clause

Sure. I think you are restating my first paragraph, but what about the second? As in, I agree that broadly "granting rights" has to be the same. But the types of situations where the rights are going to apply seem different.

Let me give a concrete example. Xiao, an athiest owner of a closely held corporation, believes that under population is a massive humanitarian problem, and thus opposes contraception and wants an exemption from obamacare. Does the law require Xiao be granted an exemption in the way that hobby lobby got an exemption? Xiao's beliefs here might be consistent with his atheistic worldview, but it is hard to understand that they are a direct consequence, or that this humanitarian belief is a religious one.

The question is, what is a "nonreligious belief" away from direct questions about God and so forth. We know the answer isn't "any belief", it has been repeatedly ruled that, say, moral objections are different from religious objections. But on a specific issue an atheist might have moral objections, but they aren't really religious objections. Unless the question is something very specific about deities like "must pledge to/against a diety at city council" or whatever.

No, he does not get that as the Hobby Lobby ruling was not based on the first amendment, but the Religious Freedom Restoration Act which does not extend to non-religion. The fact that the RFRA can extend into this territory has in fact made many regarded legal minds in your country to consider it unconstitutional.

Still, this certainly does not change my case. Non-religion is offered equal protection to religion under the first amendment, which is the law touted in the The Davis ruling (that and the 14th amendment). So my point stands. If the courts had extended this right to Davis, they must also extend it to the non-religious objections given similar comparable circumstance.

If Davis has a case under the RFRA, I don't really know. That sounds like a complicated issue, and I'm not a US law scholar (and not even American for that matter). If she does, it would be a perfect example of why the RFRA is a very bad piece of legislation.

Same point, non RFRA example if you hate that one. The point is that there are all sorts of activities and views in our lives that religious people take explicitly religious beliefs on. They have views on beard length and meat handling and breaks during the day. And they get a range of religious protections for their beliefs. Atheists, however, also get protections for their religious beliefs, but it is hard to imagine how an atheists views on beard length, meat handling, and work breaks are religious. I might have strong views on theses, but it would be hard to classify them as a religious view. There is this whole domain of societal issues where religious people have "religious beliefs" on them, but atheists just have other types of beliefs on them. And if you view the athiests beliefs as "religious" beliefs" you are now broadening the term to effectively include any belief.

Or to put it succinctly: while atheists and religious both get their religious views protected, religious people have far more manifestations in society of religious beliefs that result in accommodations and so forth. An athiest might consider their views on the creator of the universe to be a religious view, but typically one isn't going to call ones view on contraception a religious view, and it won't be protected in the same way either.

Why can't an atheist do that though?

Why can't I say "I'm against working on Sundays for religious reasons"? As far as I know, there aren't any criteria for justifying religious beliefs, so why would an atheist have to?

There IS a test. It has to be a sincerely held religious belief. It is not the case that just by saying "this is my religious belief" you get an automatic exemption, a judge is allowed to test for the sincerely of this religious belief.

I might believe that there is great value in having a dedicated day off from work and come up with various secular reasons for this. Yet those reasons seem hard to understand as religious beliefs.

Thinking that all religious beliefs are constrained to Scripture is an error.

The theologically significant portion follows from her belief about identity. I think the language she uses is something about a burdened conscience. Who she is as a person is deeply affected by her identity being used as a mark of affirmation of something she disagrees with.

I'm not sure that "show a source" is going to be useful, as there are many beliefs that aren't really structured in a straight-from-the-text manner. Not all beliefs are formed that way.

For example, suppose that I had a religious experience and am convinced that God told me that I should not sign my name to the marriage license. There may be many things that I can point to in a religious text about how I got to this religious experience (maybe some sort of meditation practices or something), but the specific content of the religious experience won't really be found in the "source" itself.

So it would therefore be sufficient for the belief to be understood as a religious belief.

http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/onl...ning-sincerity

I recommend reading the whole article slowly, but here are two things that the courts look at:

These are two good reasons to be significantly less confident in your interpretation of US law.

There may be many people who think RFRA is unconstitutional, but the only opinions that matter have not agreed with that analysis.

How do they determine sincerity?

Is Aaron on your ignore list? Fair point if so, but if not, scroll up.

I don't see how they could reliably distinguish between a sincere religious belief and a sincere belief that's only nominally religious.

My understanding is that there is a fairly wide body of cases establishing which kinds of things are and are not religious, even if I suspect it is likely tested for specifically atheists. Consider, there are limits on what a religious person gets to call a religious belief for the purposes of the court. If I sincerely want sundays off because I sincerely want to go to the beach, that doesn't make that belief religious. And that doesn't seem to substantially change if I say "well i am an athiest so their is no moral authority so if i want to go to the beach i should be able to" or some other "nominally religious" justification.

Or to put it differently, one of the courts job - perhaps the most important of them - is to adjudicate slippery slopes. They are what allows you to have various principles, often competing, and not end up at extremes like "every belief is religious" or "no belief is religious". They might rule "wrongly" in this or that case, but generally they will function to adjudicate which beliefs do and do not qualify.

In relation to the first amendment, US courts can't judge on whether a practice is religious due to its factual status. Only whether the person actually believes the claims are relevant. In regards to the workplace, "Reed vs the Great Lakes" is taken to extend this right also to non-religion, atheists or indeed even people who refuse to state the nature of their belief. You have, the supreme court has found, also the first amendment right to not believe. There is also precedence for "creeds" being regarded as the legal equivalent of religion under the first amendment, if they hold similar positions in a person's life. These are the rulings AaronW has misunderstood to mean that atheism is "legally a religion" in another thread.

This is of course all due to equality consideration, which weigh very heavily in US legal jurisprudence.

But this is all unnecessary fluff in regards to the OP. Gays have been everything from jailed to tortured and killed for their fight for their liberties in your country during the last 5 decades. That some county clerk's religious conundrums should weight heavier than the importance of carrying the precedence set by out "Obergefell et al. vs Hodges, Director, Ohio" and allow her to ignore federal orders to issue these legal documents is ludicrous . This will clearly fall under "undue hardship" suffered by the population. Given her exemption is the equivalent of giving someone in a similar position religious exemption to not issue marriage licenses to interracial couples (and no, this is certainly not crazy conspiracy theory. Lesser workplace considerations have already been legally provided to members of KKK churches).

As for RFRAs in particular, many legal scholars in your country have pushed for including providence for non-religion in them. Still RFRA really is to your secular state what the "Patriot Act" was to your liberties; the ones passing it likely went beyond their legislative power and its enforcement encroaches on the constitution, or at the very least how the constitution has been largely interpreted for the last 4 decades.

Despite what many people seem to think, faking a religious belief is quite hard. If there's a sincere belief that's only nominally religious, then it will be hard to explain that belief in a meaningful way through religious concepts.

Dur?

http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1158623.html

Pertaining more to Sun Tzu:

LOL --

The only thing that comes close to what you're talking about is this:

The next paragraph goes on to explain the "might be" language and why it isn't a "would be." And then there's another fun paragraph:

But none of this seems to really support the underlying claim. In fact, the case law (also as quoted above to Sun Tzu) seems to indicate quite explicitly that the courts can judge whether a belief is religious.

Thanks for trying to cite this case. I don't really see how it supports your position in any real way, and this is a really funny case law to read.

I've had a little more time to look at your claims further, and your use of "undue hardship" points to another significant error in your understanding of US law. "Undue hardship" is not a claim of harm against those using the service provided, but rather the employer. It is literally impossible for an "undue hardship" claim to be made on behalf of the population. The question of undue hardship applies to the government (the employer), such as whether accommodating Kim Davis' request to not have her name on the marriage certificate creates a significant burden for the government.

And you're not even citing case law in a useful way. Obergefell et al. vs Hodges, Director, Ohio does not establish anything that stands as "precedence" regarding religious accommodation. It's a 14th amendment ruling.

Promoting tolerance of LGBT can be an interest of the government, however, and that interest can be too significantly harmed by the accommodation. So you are right in the object of the harm, but it can stil be understand in this way. Although I'm with you on the "she should get an accommodation" side.

I don't think this is correct. Simply having "an interest in promoting X" does not enter into the question of "hardship." All questions of hardship come down to financial or operations viability. Is it too expensive for the employer to accommodate? Does it disrupt the operations too significantly?

In Kim Davis' case, one can argue that forms without her name on it do not meet legal standards and that it's too significant of a burden to change the laws to accommodate her. (Though I don't think that this argument is legally valid, since I'm not sure why a proxy signature cannot be accepted in this situation.)

the state can have interests in all kinds of things beyond just financial and the like costs to enact. Iirc there was a friends of the court brief on one of the gay marriage cases where they accepted that while accepting that there was only a small cost to implement gay marriage on the state, that doing so would burden the putative state interest in promoting procreation. The general idea is that when an action harms the ability to enact a state interest that is a harm. One way that harm can manifest is financial costs, but making the state less effective at its interest is certainly accepted too.

But that's neither a religious accommodation argument nor an undue hardship argument. You're talking about an argument based around a very different principle.

(Also, I think friend of the court briefs can be submitted by whomever, so unless the ruling refers to something specific, it's hard to know that an argument contained in one is even meaningful to the case.)

It's an undue hardship arguement, namely that the state suffers a hardship on its ability to promote a state interest

You're going to have to find something specific to quote, because I can find no support for your framework. "Undue hardship" is a technical term with a specific meaning and application under the law, and I don't think you're using it correctly.