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There's been a tsunami of uninformed comment about the Indiana RFRA, and enough unfounded outrage to stretch around the world a couple of times. For those who enjoy some facts in their political discussions, here's the story.
Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Explained
2:10 PM, Mar 27, 2015 • By JOHN MCCORMACKOn Thursday, Indiana governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) into law, and some celebrities, politicians, and journalists--including Miley Cyrus, Ashton Kutcher, and Hillary Clinton, just to name a few--are absolutely outraged. They say the law is a license to discriminate against gay people:
Read more...
". . . . Stanford law professor Michael McConnell, a former appellate court judge, tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD in an email: "In the decades that states have had RFRA statutes, no business has been given the right to discriminate against gay customers, or anyone else." So what is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and what does it say?
The first RFRA was a 1993 federal law that was signed into law by Democratic president Bill Clinton. It unanimously passed the House of Representatives, where it was sponsored by then-congressman Chuck Schumer, and sailed through the Senate on a 97-3 vote.
The law reestablished a balancing test for courts to apply in religious liberty cases (a standard had been used by the Supreme Court for decades). RFRA allows a person's free exercise of religion to be "substantially burdened" by a law only if the law furthers a "compelling governmental interest" in the "least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."
So the law doesn't say that a person making a religious claim will always win. In the years since RFRA has been on the books, sometimes the courts have ruled in favor of religious exemptions, but many other times they haven't. . . . . "
Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Explained
2:10 PM, Mar 27, 2015 • By JOHN MCCORMACKOn Thursday, Indiana governor Mike Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) into law, and some celebrities, politicians, and journalists--including Miley Cyrus, Ashton Kutcher, and Hillary Clinton, just to name a few--are absolutely outraged. They say the law is a license to discriminate against gay people:
Read more...
". . . . Stanford law professor Michael McConnell, a former appellate court judge, tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD in an email: "In the decades that states have had RFRA statutes, no business has been given the right to discriminate against gay customers, or anyone else." So what is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and what does it say?
The first RFRA was a 1993 federal law that was signed into law by Democratic president Bill Clinton. It unanimously passed the House of Representatives, where it was sponsored by then-congressman Chuck Schumer, and sailed through the Senate on a 97-3 vote.
The law reestablished a balancing test for courts to apply in religious liberty cases (a standard had been used by the Supreme Court for decades). RFRA allows a person's free exercise of religion to be "substantially burdened" by a law only if the law furthers a "compelling governmental interest" in the "least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."
So the law doesn't say that a person making a religious claim will always win. In the years since RFRA has been on the books, sometimes the courts have ruled in favor of religious exemptions, but many other times they haven't. . . . . "
