2. Benevolent Neutrality and Conscientious Objection

Purpose

The Free Exercise Clause accords absolute protection to individual religious convictions and beliefs and proscribes government from questioning a person’s beliefs or imposing penalties or disabilities based solely on those beliefs. The Clause extends protection to both beliefs and unbelief. (Estrada v. Escritor, A.M. NO. P-02-1651, June 22, 2006)

However, a law advancing a legitimate governmental interest is not necessarily invalid as one interfering with the free exercise of religion merely because it also has an incidental and detrimental effect on the same. (Centeno v. Villalon-Pornillos, G.R. No. 113092, Sept. 1, 1994)

Benevolent neutrality and claims of religious freedom cannot shield respondent judge from liability for misconduct under our laws. She knowingly entered into a civil marriage with her first husband. She knew its effects under our laws. She had sexual relations with her second husband while her first marriage was subsisting. She cannot claim that engaging in sexual relations with another person during the subsistence of a marriage is an exercise of her religious expression. Legal implications and obligations attach to any person who chooses to enter civil marriages. This is regardless of how civil marriages are treated in that person’s religion. Also, as a lawyer and a judge, is expected to abide by the law. Her conduct affects the credibility of the courts in dispensing justice. Thus, in finding respondent administratively liable for violation of her marriage obligations under our laws, this court protects the credibility of the judiciary in administering justice. (Perfecto v. Esidera, A.M. NO. RTJ-15-2417, July 22, 2015)

BENEVOLENT NEUTRALITY AND CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS

Benevolent neutrality protects religious realities, tradition and established practice with a flexible reading of the principle.

Accommodations are government policies that take religion specifically into account not to promote the government’s favored form of religion, but to allow individuals and groups to exercise their religion without hindrance. Their purpose or effect therefore is to remove a burden on, or facilitate the exercise of, a person’s or institution’s religion.

The government may take religion into account to exempt, when possible, from generally applicable governmental regulation individuals whose religious beliefs and practices would otherwise thereby be infringed, or to create without state involvement an atmosphere in which voluntary religious exercise may flourish. Accommodation is forbearance and not alliance. it does not reflect agreement with the minority, but respect for the conflict between the temporal and spiritual authority in which the minority finds itself.

Benevolent neutrality gives room for accommodation of religious exercises as required by the Free Exercise Clause. It allows breaches in the wall of separation to uphold religious liberty, which after all is the integral purpose of the religion clauses.

Although the Philippines’ constitutional history and interpretation mandate benevolent neutrality, benevolent neutrality does not mean that the Court ought to grant exemptions every time a free exercise claim comes before it. But it does mean that the Court will not look with hostility or act indifferently towards religious beliefs and practices and that it will strive to accommodate them when it can within flexible constitutional limits; it does mean that the Court will not simply dismiss a claim under the Free Exercise Clause because the conduct in question offends a law or the orthodox view for this precisely is the protection afforded by the religion clauses of the Constitution, i.e., that in the absence of legislation granting exemption from a law of general applicability, the Court can carve out an exception when the religion clauses justify it.

The Court thus lays down the doctrine that in Philippine jurisdiction, we adopt the benevolent neutrality approach not only because of its merits as discussed above, but more importantly, because our constitutional history and interpretation indubitably show that benevolent neutrality is the launching pad from which the Court should take off in interpreting religion clause cases. The ideal towards which this approach is directed is the protection of religious liberty not only for a minority, however small – not only for a majority, however large – but for each of us to the greatest extent possible within flexible constitutional limits. (Estrada v. Escritor, A.M. NO. P02-1651, June 22, 2006)

Sherbert Test

This is the applicable test for benevolent neutrality. The test involves the following:

• Does the law burden the person of his free exercise of religion;
• Is the person sincere in his belief; and
• Does the State prove a compelling interest in implementing the law/regulation/policy and that it used the least restrictive means to achieve that interest? (Estrada v. Escritor, A.M. No. P-02-1651, Aug. 4, 2003)

Conscientious objectors

A person who for moral or religious reasons is opposed to participating in any war, and who may be excused from military conscription but remains subject to service in civil work for the nation’s health, safety or interest. (Black’s Law Dictionary, 9th ed.)

RH Law

Sections 7, 23 and 24 commonly mandate that a hospital or a medical practitioner to immediately refer a person seeking health care and services under the law to another accessible healthcare provider despite their conscientious objections based on religious or ethical beliefs.

In this case, the conscientious objector's claim to religious freedom would warrant an exemption from obligations under the RH Law, unless the government succeeds in demonstrating a more compelling state interest in the accomplishment of an important secular objective. Necessarily so, the plea of conscientious objectors for exemption from the RH Law deserves no less than strict scrutiny.

The obligation to refer imposed by the RH Law violates the religious belief and conviction of a conscientious objector. Once the medical practitioner, against his will, refers a patient seeking information on modern reproductive health products, services, procedures and methods, his conscience is immediately burdened as he has been compelled to perform an act against his beliefs.

In case of conflict between the religious beliefs and moral convictions of individuals, on one hand, and the interest of the State, on the other, to provide access and information on reproductive health products, services, procedures and methods to enable the people to determine the timing, number and spacing of the birth of their children, the Court is of the strong view that the religious freedom of health providers, whether public or private, should be accorded primacy.

Accordingly, a conscientious objector should be exempt from compliance with the mandates of the RH Law. If he would be compelled to act contrary to his religious belief and conviction, it would be violative of "the principle of non-coercion" enshrined in the constitutional right to free exercise of religion. (Imbong v. Ochoa, G.R. No. 204819, April 8, 2014)

Conscientious Objection to Military Service

Escritor was the court interpreter at the RTC of Las Pinas. A complaint for disgraceful and immoral conduct under the Revised Administrative Code was filed against Escritor because of living with a man not her husband. As a defense, she asserted that this conjugal arrangement was in conformity with her religious congregation which was the Jehovah’s witnesses. In discussing the Free Exercise Clause, the court tackled United States v. Seeger, which involved three registrants who claimed conscientious-objector status under the U.S. military-service statute. One of the three, Seeger, was not a member of any organized religion opposed to war, but when specifically asked about his belief in a Supreme Being, Seeger stated that "you could call (it) a belief in a Supreme Being or God. These just do not happen to be the words that I use." Forest Peter, another one of the three claimed that after considerable meditation and reflection "on values derived from the Western religious and philosophical tradition," he determined that it would be "a violation of his moral code to take human life and that he considered this belief superior to any obligation to the state." The Court avoided a constitutional question by broadly interpreting not the Free Exercise Clause, but the statutory definition of religion in the Universal Military Training and Service Act of 1948 which exempt from combat anyone "who, by reason of religious training and belief, is conscientiously opposed to participation in war in any form." (Estrada v. Escritor A.M. No. P-02-1651, June 22, 2006. See also Gerona v. Secretary of Education, G.R. No. L13954, Aug. 12, 1959)

Under the United States statute construed in U.S. v. Seeger, supra, qualifying conscientious objection was a ground for exemption from combatant military service; this was a U.S. statutory exemption, not a Philippine rule. It also includes those with a sincere and meaningful belief which occupies in the life of its possessor a place parallel to that filled by the God of those admittedly qualifying for the exemption. (380 U.S. 163, March 8, 1965)