Faith in the balance? An evaluation of the outcomes of religious free exercise claims in the state appellate courts, 1997-2011

Religious believers across the globe have two sets of obligations: the obligation to follow the dictates of their creed and the obligation to obey the law of the state. Though these obligations often exist in harmony with one another, they come into opposition when conduct mandated under one set of obligations is proscribed under the other. The federal Constitution and all state constitutions protect the right to practice one's religion freely, but how durable are these protections in the face of laws that prohibit what believers feel they must do because of religion? This dissertation explores the results of the judicial process Americans pursue when their religious and legal duties come into conflict, and does so in the context of the state appellate judicial system. It uses multivariate statistical modeling techniques to answer two related questions: (1) what factors predict whether a free exercise claim will be upheld or rejected in the state courts, and (2) what factors predict the form of legal test on which judges base their decisions. Legal positivist and legal realist frameworks from the sociology of law are employed to address these research questions. Content analysis of published opinions in the state appellate court systems from mid-1997 to 2011 was conducted to generate the dataset employed to test hypotheses related to the two research questions. The dissertation finds that claimants in state appellate free exercise cases are rarely successful; the vast majority of claims are not upheld by the courts. The dissertation also finds that when judges use legal tests that balance the severity of burdens imposed by the government on religious exercise against the government's interest in doing so, they are more likely to uphold free exercise claims than when a rational-basis test is used. Unlike previous studies of free exercise disputes in the courts, however, the dissertation does not report differences in case outcomes based on the religious affiliations of claimants.