Disparate Discrimination

This Article explains and analyzes a recent trend in the Supreme Court’s cases regarding unintentional discrimination, where the argument is that a law has the effect of producing a disadvantage on members of a particular group. In religious discrimination cases, the Court has held that a law is presumptively unconstitutional if the law results in a comparable secular activity being treated more favorably than religious activity. Yet in racial discrimination cases, the Court has said the mere fact that a law more severely disadvantages racial minorities as a group does not suffice to establish unlawful discrimination. The two tracks for unintentional discrimination claims can be understood through the lens of political process theory. One part of political process theory maintains that courts should be skeptical of laws that negatively affect discrete and insular minorities who may be politically powerless and face prejudice. One reason the Court more carefully scrutinizes laws that burden conservative, (often) Christian religious groups may be that the Court views those groups as socially powerless because their views no longer command majority support and because their views are not treated with the respect the Court thinks they deserve. And the Court’s decisions have the effect of redistributing power to or reinforcing power in the groups the Court believes to be socially powerless. Identifying the jurisprudential worldview that may plausibly drive these trends helps to identify the potential implications and assess the merits of the new doctrinal approach that the Court has taken in (some) antidiscrimination cases. The Court’s new approach to religious discrimination claims has some virtues; in particular, the Court is probably right to consider facts from the private sphere, such as a group’s economic or social power, in deciding the appropriate scope of judicial review. But the selectivity with which the Court has applied this approach, as well as the Court’s odd assessments of various groups’ power, has resulted in a problematic jurisprudence of conservative victimization that judicially protects backlash against advances in equality and antidiscrimination law.