The Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed in 1993 “to ensure that interests in religious freedom are protected.”
Lately, the bill has been used to more to restrict freedoms. One of the worst offenders is Hobby Lobby. They said that providing birth control to their employees violates their religious beliefs, so they didn’t want to cover it. Since when does an employer have any say over what happens in the bedroom? Unfortunately, SCOUTS ruled in their favor.
The deputy legal director of the ACLU had this to say about the decision at the time:
“This is a deeply troubling decision. For the first time, the highest court in the country has said that business owners can use their religious beliefs to deny their employees a benefit that they are guaranteed by law.”
A coalition of congress members has proposed an amendment to the bill called the “Do No Harm Act.” It would:
“…clarify that no one can seek religious exemption from laws guaranteeing fundamental civil and legal rights.”
Congressman Joe Kennedy III said this about it:
“This bill is important and timely. It tries to restore the fundamental balance between two bedrock American values, which are the free exercise of religion and the equal protection of our law.
“The Religious Freedom Restoration Act was originally enacted with broad bipartisan support…to protect religious freedom, particularly for religious minorities. But over the past several years we have seen across our country that RFRA has been used as a tool to impose one’s religion on another, or infringe on another’s basic rights. This law simply tries to recalibrate that balance. It recognizes the fundamental right to free exercise—we don’t want to repeal RFRA—but it also recognizes that you have to respect other’s individual rights.”
This would take away a lot of the problems of the RFRA including the Hobby Lobby ruling. Many states have their own version of the law and have taken it to varying extremes. Many entities have used this law to discriminate against members of the LGBT community because of their religious beliefs.
There are not any Republicans supporting the bill at the moment..surprise, surprise.
You should be able to practice your religion without taking away freedom from others.
Here is an interesting discussion of religious freedom from the YouTube channel, Seeker Daily:
Featured image by Mark Wilson/Getty.
