Thread by @MikeSacksEsq

Note that this case only exists bc people got mad when SCOTUS OK’d execution of a Muslim without an imam by his side in a state that only provided Christian pastors so SCOTUS stopped a state with similar rules from executing a Buddhist, and so those states just barred all clergy

https://twitter.com/mjs_dc/status/1360223616336543744

February 7, 2019

https://twitter.com/mikesacksesq/status/1283515544256368651

March 28, 2019

https://twitter.com/mikesacksesq/status/1283516500997963777

Note also how death penalty cases like these have (largely) inverted the typical liberal-conservative religious liberty positions. I’d argue here that the liberals’ position is more consistent because this issue falls squarely within RLUIPA’s protections...

While the liberals tend to get off the bus when religious liberty claimants seek to broaden the previously-understood scopes of RFRA/RLUIPA and, when those statutes don’t apply, the First Amendment’s Smith test.

Note, also, that Kavanaugh/Roberts (and probably Thomas, but who knows with either/both Alito/Gorsuch) appear to be importing the Smith test, which they want to reverse, into RLUIPA by accepting Alabama’s RATHER THAN ACCOMMODATE NONCHRISTIANS NO PASTOR FOR YOU OR ANYONE rule

For now though this case seems a strong data point that Barrett takes seriously both her broad commitment to the conservative religious liberty project and the separation of her personal faith’s tenets from the conservative legal position on the death penalty

https://twitter.com/mikesacksesq/status/1309629451895009285

But what about abortion, you say? Well, assuming she’s a vote to cut away at Casey if not reverse Roe, then

https://twitter.com/mikesacksesq/status/1311697326839390208

This shadow docket ruling suggests that Barrett, who has consistently voted against blocking executions as a matter of law, prioritizes the conservative religious liberty project above the right's post-Kennedy push to speed up the machinery of death