Religion & American Law

Despite controversy regarding Indiana’s recently passed, “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson signed a similar bill into law on April 3, 2015. The governor originally refused to sign the bill into law, which prompted the House to amend the bill quickly in order to get it passed. The bill in its original form was, “the most extreme version of a religious freedom act in the country,” and it was amended so that it appeared closer to the federal bill already in place.

            Bill 975 was passed with a 26 to 0 vote and allows businesses to refuse service to customers if the actions of those customers violate the religious beliefs of the religious business owners. One of the Bill’s sponsors described the Bill’s purpose as, "We're going to allow a person to believe what they want to believe without the state coming in and burdening that unless they've got a good reason to do so." The intention of the Bill is to protect religious citizens from being forced to participate in activities that go against their beliefs. 

This Bill, like the Indiana one, appears facially neutral. Nowhere in the bill does it say anything about discrimination towards the LGBTQ community. However, many people, gay or not, believe it is implied. Bill 975 gives justification to many of the current events we’ve been talking about in class recently such as the baker in Colorado, the doctor in Michigan, and the videographer in Ohio.  Under this Bill, all of these individuals would have been protected from being forced to serve the same-sex couples in each case. In addition, this Bill was passed just before the Supreme Court is expected to make a ruling regarding same-sex marriage. Many view this Bill as a preemptive measure put in place to protect religious business owners from the ruling the Supreme Court may make soon. 

            Although I do think that this Bill is discriminatory, I do think it is constitutional. The Free Exercise Clause was designed to protect the religious beliefs of individuals. I think forcing private business owners to do something that directly goes against their religious beliefs violates the Free Exercise clause. Their ability to freely practice their religion is compromised if they are forced to act in ways that violate their religious beliefs such as catering a same-sex wedding or making a floral arrangement for a same-sex couple.

This bill to me brings up the question of whose rights are more important? Is it the rights of people who live their lives in conjunction with their religious beliefs or the rights of people who want to be treated equally? I think it’s an extremely tough question to answer with no answer being the “right” one. What’s right for one group of people is not what’s necessarily right for another group which makes a Bill like this extremely difficult to pass judgment on.

Should this Bill have been passed? Is the right of Free Exercise more important than the rights of the LGBTQ community—who are citizens of this country too? Are the two even comparable?