Latest Case: Hernandez-Chacon v. Barr (Immigration Law)

The Unacknowledged Clash Between the Supreme Court’s Interpretation of the Religion Clauses and the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment

VIKRAM DAVID AMAR, ALAN E. BROWNSTEIN

Illinois law dean Vikram David Amar and UC Davis law professor emeritus Alan Brownstein comment on a largely unacknowledged clash between religious accommodations and exemptions on the one hand, and core free speech principles which the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized, on the other. Amar and Brownstein describe this apparent conflict and suggest that the Court begin to resolve the conflict when it decides two cases later this term presenting the question of the scope of the “ministerial exception.”

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Hernandez-Chacon v. Barr

Docket: 17-3903

Opinion Date: January 23, 2020

Judge: Chin

Areas of Law: Immigration Law

The Second Circuit granted a petition for review of the BIA's dismissal of petitioner's appeal from an IJ's denial of her application for asylum. Petitioner claimed that she was entitled to asylum because if she is returned to El Salvador, she will be persecuted on account of her membership in a particular social group ‐‐ Salvadoran women who have resisted the sexual advances of a gang member ‐‐ and political opinion ‐‐ resistance to the norm of female subordination to male dominance that pervades El Salvador. The court held that, although petitioner failed to establish her asylum claim based on membership in a particular social group, the agency did not adequately consider petitioner's political opinion claim. In this case, the agency concluded that petitioner did not have a political opinion; concluded that petitioner simply chose to not be a victim; and failed to consider whether the attackers imputed an anti‐patriarchy political opinion to her when she resisted their sexual advances, and whether that imputed opinion was a central reason for their decision to target her. Accordingly, the court remanded for further proceedings.