Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Explained

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Weekly Standard:

On 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:

 

Meanwhile, activists are calling for a boycott. The CEO of SalesForce, a company that does business in China, is pulling out of Indiana. The NCAA has expressed concern about holding events there in the future. And the city of San Francisco is banning taxpayer-funded travel to the state.

 

Is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act really a license to discriminate against gay people?

 

No. 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.

________

 

Much ado about nothing.

[Valin]

________

 

Much ado about nothing.

 

 

 

And when has that ever stopped stupid people from say & doing stupid things? I have been following this for a couple of days, but had to stop...my head hurt to much.

[Draggingtree]

Your Questions On Indiana’s Religious Freedom Bill, Answered

By Gabriel Malor MARCH 30, 2015

This past week, journalistic abuse has exploded into controversy over an innocuous religious freedom law in Indiana. This law, known as a Religious Freedom Restoration Act or RFRA (pronounced “riff-ra”), tracks the language of the 1993 federal RFRA signed into law by President Clinton after a 97-3 vote in the Senate. But you would not necessarily know how innocuous it is from news media coverage. According to what you might hear in the news, this is an anti-gay law that is “almost universally loathed,” and which a White House official suggested would “legitimize discrimination.”

 

Indiana’s RFRA has none of these characteristics.

 

There is in works of fiction a concept called the informed attribute. An informed attribute is an abuse of storytelling that occurs when the author gets lazy and, instead of demonstrating that a character has a certain characteristic, simply informs the audience that they do. So, for example, think of the way Daniel Defoe characterized Friday in “Robinson Crusoe”: savage, cannibal—except that Friday never does anything savage or cannibal throughout the novel. http://thefederalist.com/2015/03/30/your-questions-on-indianas-religious-freedom-bill-answered/

[Valin]

Your Questions On Indiana’s Religious Freedom Bill, Answered

By Gabriel Malor

 

 

Just Stop it! You're getting in the way of a perfectly wonderful Twitter storm.

[Valin]

(Here I Go Again)

 

What we see here is one more, of a seemingly growing example of Two Different Nations....or Two Different Planets.

[Draggingtree]

Liberals Have Discarded Religious Liberty

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary03.30.2015 - 5:30 PM

There are two ways of looking at the furor that has erupted over the signing into law of a Religious Freedom Restoration Act by the state of Indiana. One is to focus on the fact that this law is a bit different from a federal law of the same name that also has been passed in 19 other states in that its broader language allows claims of religious liberty to be invoked as a defense in civil lawsuits between private parties as well as those involving government action. But for anyone who has been listening to the debate about this law, if the one-sided opprobrium that has been hurled at Indiana in the liberal press can be dignified by such a term, there’s little question that legal debates about the need to balance the rights of individuals to observe the dictates of their consciences with those banning acts of discrimination have been thrown out the window in favor of a rush to anathematize anyone who dares to assert that the right to religious liberty can be viewed as being as important as the right to gay marriage.

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/2015/03/30/liberals-have-discarded-religious-liberty-rfra-gay-marriage-indiana/

[Draggingtree]

Stand Up for Indiana

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN • March 31, 2015, 12:05 AM

American Spirit / Shutterstock.com

In what has been called the “Catholic moment” in America, in the late 1940s and 1950s, Catholics were admonished from pulpits to “live the faith” and “set an example” for others. Public lives were to reflect moral beliefs. Christians were to avoid those “living in sin.” Christians who operated motels and hotels did not rent rooms to unmarried couples.

 

Fast forward to 21st-century America.

 

Indiana just enacted a law, as have 19 other states, to protect the rights of religious people to practice their beliefs in how they live their lives and conduct their businesses. And the reaction? Nearly hysterical.

The head of the NCAA, the founder of Apple, chief executives of SalesForce and Yelp, Martina Navratilova, Larry King, Miley Cyrus and other celebrities are rushing to express their shock. Boycotts of Indiana are being demanded. Tweeted Hillary on her now-empty server: “Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn’t discriminate against [people because] of who they love.” http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/stand-up-for-indiana/

 

[Valin]

Why The Atlantic Is Wrong about Indiana's Religious Freedom Law
JOHN MCCORMACK

Mar 31, 2015

 

Garrett Epps writes at The Atlantic that I am wrong to say there aren't "significant" differences between the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and Indiana's RFRA.

 

According to Epps, who teaches creative writing and constitutional law at the University of Baltimore, there are two major differences between the Indiana law and the federal law. "First, the Indiana law explicitly allows any for-profit business to assert a right to 'the free exercise of religion.' The federal RFRA doesn’t contain such language," writes Epps. "Second, the Indiana statute explicitly makes a business’s 'free exercise' right a defense against a private lawsuit by another person, rather than simply against actions brought by government."

 

"I am not sure what McCormack was thinking," writes Epps, referring to my claim that there aren't any "significant" differences between Indiana's RFRA and the federal RFRA.

 

If Epps could have continued reading just a bit longer, he would have discovered that I back up this claim by directing readers to the writings of University of Virgina law professor Douglas Laycock, Stanford University law professor Michael McConnell (a former federal judge on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals), and South Texas law professor Josh Blackman: "Indiana's RFRA makes it explicit that the law applies to persons engaged in business as well as citizens in private lawsuits, but until quite recently it had always been understood that federal RFRA covered businesses and private lawsuits. (See this post by law professor Josh Blackman for more on these matters.)"

 

In an email to THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Douglas Laycock explains why the Indiana RFRA's inclusion of corporations isn't really different from federal RFRA:

 

(Snip)

 

[Valin]

Two Different Planets.

 

 

1. Ed Schultz Cant Win Debate With Conservative Guest, So He Cuts His Mic Off

Alex Griswold

 

MSNBCs Ed Schultz likely didnt know what he was getting into when he invited Heritage Foundation Fellow Ryan Anderson on The Ed Show to discuss the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). In the middle of the heated debate, during which Anderson schooled Schultz on the history and context of RFRAs, Schultz was forced to cut his guests mic off to save face.

 

 

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2. Ed Schultz throws Ryan Anderson off his show over RFRA

 

 

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[Draggingtree]

Indiana’s Religious Freedom Fury Completes The Invasion Of The Hypotheticals

Ever notice how liberals always freak out about what might happen as a result of things like religious freedom laws, when the opposite is actually happening?

By Gavin McInnes APRIL 1, 2015

The outrage over Indiana’s religious freedom law (no air quotes here) is a great example of how purely hypothetical the Left has become. In fact, from now on I’m going to call them The Hypotheticals. They oppose this law because—hypothetically—it could lead to discrimination.

Here in the non-hypothetical world, however, Sweet Cakes by Melissa really did go bankrupt for not baking a gay cake and the Giffords really did have to pay $13,000 for not holding a gay marriage in their living room. I understand the argument that Indiana’s law might have repercussions down the line, but why pontificate when we can see the adverse effects of doing the opposite right now?

http://thefederalist.com/2015/04/01/indianas-religious-freedom-fury-completes-the-invasion-of-the-hypotheticals/

[Valin]