The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (“the Church”) has attempted to play an active role in shaping religious freedom jurisprudence in the United States by submitting numerous amicus curiae (friend-of-the-court) briefs to the US Supreme Court. Amicus briefs are written by interested persons or groups who are not parties to a case to provide the court additional perspectives that might inform the decision in a case. The Church has submitted amicus briefs for nearly fifty years. In this study, we examined each amicus brief submitted by the Church to the US Supreme Court between 2008 and 2022, taking particular interest in how the 2015 legalization of the same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges influence subsequent briefs. Our analysis of the sixteen amicus briefs focused on three guiding questions:

1. Which issues most interest the Church as evidenced by its submission of amicus briefs?

2. How has the Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015 (Obergefell v. Hodges) changed Church advocacy of religious freedom, if at all?

3. What moral, philosophical, policy, and legal arguments for religious freedom has the Church made in its amicus briefs?

In 2008 the Church engaged in advocacy efforts for Proposition 8, a California ballot proposal to define marriage between a man and a woman. Given Church interest in the marriage debate and associated religious freedom issues in the legislative sphere, we decided to investigate whether there was parallel advocacy for these issues in the judiciary.

Based on our research, we found that the Church promotes a religious freedom framework focused on judicial standards that prioritize a right to institutional religious autonomy, protection from governmental discrimination against religious institutions in public funding contexts, a balancing of religious identity claims with other identity claims, and a presumption in favor of religious exemptions when the law burdens religious exercise.

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CONCLUSION

While recognizing the limitations on our analysis noted previously, we can conclude that every brief that the Church has submitted ties back to religious freedom, directly or indirectly. The Church has not engaged in any judicial advocacy as amici outside of cases pertaining to religious freedom. Furthermore, it has never submitted a brief alone; its briefs are always written in conjunction with other religious organizations.

The Church seems to be interested in influencing the Supreme Court’s legal standards that have religious freedom implications. For some issues, such as institutional church autonomy in hiring persons central to the faith and religious discrimination by the government in public programs, the Church has asked for categorical protections, arguing that governmental interference should never be permitted. In other cases, especially in relation to LGBTQ+ issues, the Church has argued for balancing tests to work out competing identity claims. The Church has also argued in favor of extending religious exemptions. And finally, the Church has argued for an original understanding of the Fathers’ perspectives on the Establishment Clause to argue that the Establishment Clause did not intent to cut religious out of the public square.