종교적 편의 제공과 실질적 평등: 법학전문대학원 입시에서의 종교적 편의 제공에 관한 대법원 판결 연구

This paper examines a landmark 2024 Supreme Court ruling which found unlawful a law school’s refusal to accommodate a Seventh-day Adventist applicant’s request for an alternative examination schedule. The ruling marks a significant departure from previous Constitutional Court decisions, which had consistently rejected religious accommodations in examination scheduling through a liberty-rights-based approach focusing on freedom of religion. Instead, the Supreme Court prioritized equality rights and implicitly applied the doctrine of indirect discrimination—a first in examination-related religious accommodation cases. Notably, the Court held that the constitutional principle of equality can require public institutions to provide reasonable accommodations for religious minorities, even absent explicit statutory provisions. Previous cases involving religious minorities seeking examination schedule adjustments—including for the bar examination, Law School Admission Test (LEET), and national nursing licensing exam—had consistently resulted in denials that effectively barred candidates from pursuing their chosen professions. The Constitutional Court’s rulings in these cases revealed a pattern of privileging administrative efficiency and majority interests over minority rights, often overemphasizing majority convenience in their balancing analysis while failing to adequately address systemic discrimination against religious minorities. By shifting from a liberty-based to an equality-centered framework, the Supreme Court’s ruling introduces a novel approach to analyzing religious discrimination in examination policies. While not explicitly invoking the term, the Court effectively applied indirect discrimination principles and recognized that constitutional equality provisions can impose affirmative duties of reasonable accommodation even without specific statutory authorization. This marks a significant evolution from the Constitutional Court’s previous approach, which had been criticized for its reliance on administrative convenience, majority-centered reasoning, and superficial analysis of religious freedom claims. This paper evaluates the ruling’s legal significance through comparative analysis with domestic precedents and relevant U.S. and European jurisprudence. Courts in several jurisdictions have held that public institutions, when faced with religious accommodation requests in examination contexts, must provide specific, substantive justifications rather than relying on general claims of administrative burden or fairness concerns. The Supreme Court’s ruling thus represents a meaningful convergence with international standards, demonstrating a more proactive approach to protecting religious minorities through robust equality rights interpretation.