My concern in this paper is with legal mandates to engage in cooperation that one otherwise would view as impermissible.

A paradigm instance would be the Affordable Care Act with its requirement to provide contraceptive coverage as part of the preventive care services for women.

Some object to such coverage because they believe certain contraceptives to be abortifation, others because they

believe the use of contraceptives to be impermissible. Now, for some time, but particularly since

the advent of the ACA, I've had a worry about the form that a certain kind of objection takes to that

mandate or to similar mandates or directives. And the worry arises right at the point at which those who protested the

mandate, as I did, including on public discourse, it's just as an aside that if you really

wanted to do something nice for me, you would read the article, the most recent article on,

or not read it, it doesn't really matter, on assault

weapons in public discourse, and just send me a nice email.

So, that would be fun.

And novel would be.

So the worry arises right at the point which those who protested raise the issue of religious

liberty in the following way. When they ask, is it permissible for the state to coerce the

conscience of an institution like Hobby Lobby or the University of Notre Dame or to force an institution

to violate its conscience or to raise the costs for such an institution of following its conscience or to force an institution to violate its conscience, or to raise the costs for such an institution of following its conscience, or to put a penalty on the institution for following its conscience.

These questions can be posed in the same way for individuals.

When framed as an objection, the issue is usually addressed by saying that is wrong for the state to force the individuals

to violate their conscience, whether in the limited case, say, of the ACA or more generally.

But generally, it's also asked in a larger frame, wrong now, but when would it be permissible

for the state to force an individual or an institution to violate its conscience, right?

There has to be some threshold, it seems, from this standpoint where you're thinking about it in this way,

...