Friday, April 1, 2016

4.2 Religious Freedom Restoration Acts

1. LGBTQ advocates fear that business owners will use it as a way to legally discriminate. 
2. Section 4 protects religious nonprofits from having to provide services that violate their faith, unless they agreed to do so in a contract or grant application. Section 5 protects the rights of religious nonprofits to hire only people who support and practice their faith. These both would allow for discrimination. 
3. Atlanta has laws in place that ban discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, which Georgia's laws would overpower. 
4. RFRA's have been in place for 25 years to allow discrimination in different states, but there have hardly been any legal cases regarding the discrimination. RFRA's don't give individuals or organizations unlimited religious power against the law. They only allow for reasonable accommodations if the government can't prove it has a compelling interest to enforce a law or regulation in a certain way. 
5. They allow people to challenge undue burdens on their faith that result from laws and policies, but only if the government can't show that it has a compelling interest to apply the burden and a reasonable accommodation isn't available.
6. Religious minorities benefit from these laws. 
7. Businesses cannot be forced to provide birth control to their employees if it goes against their religious views. 
8. The protection of LGBTQ people is not explicitly stated in the Bill of Rights, but their equality is important legally which goes with civil rights. 

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