Q::Does that raise issues, in and of itself, when you have people who are asserting that they don't have to follow certain laws and calling them religious beliefs? Is it legally significant whether their interpretation of the religious beliefs of the tradition they are part of are actually correct?
That's actually an excellent question and a kind of unresolved one because a lot of people assume that you have to have some kind of doctrinal position to fall back on; some doctrinal position to point to.
Occasionally the Courts do that, but they do so with a little sense of nervousness. Because the idea that the Court is going to decide whether something is a central tenet of a religious group, or whether the interpretation by the leaders of a church are the only interpretations that will be given any kind of legal credence, that's a big deal in itself. Because even a staunch church-state seperationist (in the sense we want the Government to be entirely secular) we do get a little nervous when members of the SCOTUS start to parse the theology of individual institutions.
So in general, if you say as an individual, "I interpret my religion to be X" even if the boss says it's Y, you're going to get listened to in the Federal courts. You're not going to be thrown out because you can't prove this is a doctrinal matter that came down from the, if not heaven, at least from the hierarchy of your church.
So it's still kind of an unresolved question, but in this case, the Mennonite owner of the furniture company has said that he is not trying to argue that every Mennonite believes as he does. He just says, "Look, I look at religious experience; I look at scripture and I have concluded that I can't be a party to the provision of birth control."
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