The End of Peremptory Strikes?: Free Exercise and Religion-Based <em>Batson</em> Challenges

This article explores and applies recent changes in free exercise doctrine to analyze how courts may evaluate proposals to extend the protections of Batson v. Kentucky to religious affiliation, status, and/or belief.It argues that recent shifts in free exercise doctrine are almost certain to bar peremptory strikes that discriminate on the basis of religious affiliation alone.These new limits will further degrade the peremptory system, which has increasingly lost its original form and function as new nondiscrimination requirements have been foisted on the use of peremptories.Nonetheless, as with race-and sex-based strikes, attorneys are likely to maintain numerous tools to employ peremptories based wholly or in part on religious belief, as opposed to affiliation, despite some evidence that free exercise doctrine likewise should prohibit these strikes. Table of Contents