For me, these are core values.

My life’s work is in a legislative body, where the majority rules. If you can count to 71 in the House and 24 in the Senate, you win.

But the First Amendment provides that the majority does not prevail when fundamental rights are violated.

The constitutional protection of freedom of the press does not prohibit a court from requiring a reporter to reveal a source, the Supreme Court has ruled. Nonetheless, the legislature can provide such protections by statute.

Similarly, the Court has held that the government can burden an individual’s exercise of his or her religious beliefs if there is a rational basis for a law of general applicability. Here as well, the legislature can enact additional protections, and the Congress has.

What prompts this discussion of constitutional law?

After the hearing concluded on my reporter’s shield bill yesterday, I learned that my religious accommodation bill had failed, 8-2.

Fundamentally, we were unable to persuade a majority of the members of the subcommittee that the exercise of religious belief – whether it’s a Shabbat elevator or a Hindu wall covering, is worthy of special consideration.