ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the role of gender in the religion clause cases that dominated the Supreme Court's docket during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, issues of gender equality seemed poised to provide the Court an opening to expand religious rights. Instead, the Court employed the pandemic to transform the doctrine. Gender operated in three ways. First, the Court continued to expand on notions of discrimination against religion so as to challenge protections against sex discrimination. Second, the religious woman became a rhetorical device used to strike down public health limitations on COVID-19, even as the Court in other cases expanded religious exemptions for employers by erasing their women employees. Third, the political economy of the pandemic gave a boost to the Court's continued erosion of the Establishment Clause—leading to a banner year for religious school funding, retreat from public schools, and emphasis on neoliberal mothering.
