Religion-Free Environments in Common Interest Communities

Abstract

This article proceeds as follows: Part II describes the pervasiveness of CIC restrictions and the emerging problem of religion-free environments; Part III explains why servitude regimes that create religion-free environments are harmful to both the person and society, and develops a normative approach based on religious, philosophical, and jurisprudential insights; Part IV argues that reliance on statutory norms of nondiscrimination is insufficient to halt the development of religion-free environments, that reliance on constitutional norms would actually produce such environments, and that only the traditional public policy analysis can prevent the growth of religion-free environments. In the end, the article rejects the attempt to rely on an anti-discrimination model or to constitutionalize important rights. Instead, it employs the rule of reason for the effective protection of those rights, on the theory that CICs correspond more closely to a model of neighborhood with collaboration and reciprocity as primary values,  rather than to one in which persons assert rights against a government.