Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Year : 2, Issue : 8
Washington: The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to decide the legality of excluding jurors on the basis of religion, turning away a Missouri agency’s bid to reverse a lesbian worker’s win in a workplace bias lawsuit after three prospective jurors were excluded for citing Christian beliefs that being gay is a sin.
State officials had appealed after a lower court denied their request for a new trial following a jury decision siding with plaintiff Jean Finney in her suit against the Missouri Department of Corrections. The state had argued that the removal during the jury selection process of the three individuals who expressed their religious views violated the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment promise of equal protection under the law.
Missouri officials told the justices that equal protection rights, which protect prospective jurors from being eliminated on basis of sex or race, should extend to religion, adding that the U.S. Constitution “ought not to tolerate exclusion on the basis of religion, the very first freedom protected by the Bill of Rights.”
State officials conceded that prospective jurors could be excluded if specific religious beliefs, as opposed to merely the religion to which they adhere, caused them to be biased.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has taken an expansive view of religious interests in recent years, including a decision last year that permitted an evangelical Christian web design business owner to refuse to provide service for same-sex weddings.
Source: Reuters
