Catherine Smith Publishes Essay in the Georgetown Journal of Gender & the Law The essay explains arguments advanced by Smith and her coauthors in several amicus briefs in cases heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

By Law Communications
July 24, 2025

Washington and Lee law professor Catherine Smith, along with coauthors Tanya Washington and Robin Walker Sterling, has published an essay in the Georgetown Journal of Gender & the Law. The essay, “Religious Exemptions to Anti-Discrimination Law: Children’s Rights in the Constitutional Calculus,” explains the authors work advancing children’s constitutional rights through a series of amicus briefs.

“Increasingly, religious actors in the public sphere–whether in the provision of goods and services (Masterpiece Cakeshop) or in government contracting (Fulton)–are simply invoking a person’s sexual orientation as inconsistent with their religious tenets to benefit from a legal doctrine that shields them from the requirement that they offer an underlying rationale for LGBTQ discrimination. Over the past decade, we have filed amicus briefs in United States Supreme Court cases advancing children’s constitutional rights, including briefs providing a check on these religious-based arguments when they adversely impact children’s rights in the familial and child regulation contexts and equal access to the public resources. In our brief in Fulton v. Philadelphia, we highlighted how the categorical exemption courts have carved out for religious actors performing government duties gives legal effect to private biases at the expense of children and in contravention of their status as constitutional rights bearers. Our most recent amicus brief in St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy extends this argument into the education sphere which, like the foster care system at issue in Fulton, is a uniquely child-centered context and one in which children’s constitutional rights have been historically acknowledged under state and federal law,” the authors write.

The article is available online at the W&L Scholarly Commons.

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