The United States Constitution protects the free exercise of religion, meaning that religious exemptions can sometimes be granted if a law infringes upon someone's sincerely held religious beliefs. But how do people decide whether someone else's religious exemption requests are legitimate? New research suggests that political ideology can play a key role in the court of public opinion.
Americans tend to be skeptical of exemption requests made by people whose political views they do not agree with, and more accepting of requests from those who they do align with politically - according to researchers publishing in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
"Americans may care less about the fair application of First Amendment protections and instead may be inclined to selectively apply such protections to advance their political goals," explains lead author Mary Katz, a PhD student in the department of psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago. Katz conducted this work with her doctoral advisor Dr. Michael Pasek - assistant professor of psychology at UIC and senior author of the paper. The team also includes former UIC postdoctoral fellow Dr. Nava Caluori.
Previous research has shown that the way people evaluate information and make decisions is heavily influenced by their group identities and political ideologies. Researchers say that these same processes guide how Americans determine who deserves religious freedom protections.
Across four studies, researchers investigated whether Americans associate conservative political stances with religion, and how they reason about religious exemption claims. They found that participants did tend to associate conservatism, particularly on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, with sincere religious belief, but whether they supported a person's religious exemption request was driven by political alignment.
"Our work suggests that, at a basic psychological level, the ways that people perceive legally-relevant information and reason about the provision of rights is heavily shaped by ideological biases," says Katz. "This is alarming because it highlights the potential for ideological leanings to supersede the fair application of the law."
One of the questions that the researchers address is whether Americans think that religious freedom can effectively be invoked to challenge abortion bans after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. This is a timely question because there are many current legal cases grounded in the argument that such bans infringe upon the rights of people, like Jews, whose religion mandates that the life of an expectant mother be given priority over that of an unborn fetus.
Even though religion is more typically associated with anti-abortion stances and prominent lawyers and politicians have questioned the sincerity of pro-choice religious arguments, this research shows that the American public may be receptive to these types of pro-choice arguments grounded in religious freedom logic.
The authors note that there are many reasons why people could prefer ideologically aligned claims over conflicting ones – from simple ingroup biases to differences in the way that liberals and conservatives think about the consequences of denying or granting requests. They may also disagree about who the judicial system should prioritize protecting, and the researchers hope to explore these questions in future studies.
In the meantime, Dr. Pasek notes that these findings present an opportunity for people to reflect on their decision-making processes.
"Americans should critically interrogate whether they let their own ideological biases shape how they think about who deserves, and perhaps more importantly doesn't deserve, religious freedom protections," says Dr. Pasek. "These same biases may similarly influence the way that liberals and conservatives reason about the provision of other legal rights too."
