Squelching Dissent

Stephen L. Carter on the squelching of a law professor. An excerpt:

Laycock’s wrong is to have taken the position that there may be cases in which individual religious freedom should trump compliance with law -- a view that, during Bill Clinton's administration, was considered the liberal position in our politics. In particular, he has filed a brief in favor of Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., in the case challenging the federal government's rule that employers with religious objections must nevertheless comply with the mandate to pay for birth control, and he wrote a blog post in the Washington Post defending, in part, the controversial Arizona legislation, vetoed by the governor of the state, that would have expanded somewhat the protection of the state’s religious freedom laws. (News reports insisted that the changes would have meant that a caterer, for example, could refuse to work the wedding of a same-sex couple; Laycock wrote that this wasn't what the law said.)