{"id":451,"date":"2015-03-31T18:35:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T23:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=451"},"modified":"2015-03-31T18:35:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T23:35:00","slug":"shooting-your-state-in-the-foot-or-whos-your-best-friend-ctd-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2015\/03\/31\/shooting-your-state-in-the-foot-or-whos-your-best-friend-ctd-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Shooting Your State in the Foot; or, Who\u2019s your best friend?, Ctd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continuing this thread<\/a>, The Atlantic weighs in on the legal interpretation of the Indiana law<\/a>:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a factual dispute about the new Indiana law. It is called a \u201cReligious Freedom Restoration Act,\u201d like the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in 1993.*<\/a> Thus a number of its defenders have claimed it is really the same law. Here, for example, is the Weekly Standard<\/i><\/a>\u2019s John McCormack: \u201cIs there any difference between Indiana’s law and the federal law? Nothing significant.\u201d I am not sure what McCormack was thinking; but even my old employer, The Washington Post, <\/i>seems to believe that if a law has a similar title as another law, they must be identical. <\/i>\u201cIndiana is actually soon to be just one of 20 states with a version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA,\u201d the Post<\/i>\u2019s Hunter Schwarz <\/i>wrote<\/a>, linking to this map<\/a> created by the National Conference of State Legislatures.<\/p>\n

The problem with this statement is that, well, it\u2019s false. That becomes clear when you read and compare those tedious state statutes.\u00a0 If you do that, you will find that the Indiana statute has two features the federal RFRA\u2014and most state RFRAs\u2014do not. First, the Indiana law explicitly allows any for-profit business to assert a right to \u201cthe free exercise of religion.\u201d The federal RFRA doesn\u2019t contain such language, and neither does any of the state RFRAs except South Carolina\u2019s; in fact, Louisiana and Pennsylvania, explicitly exclude<\/i> for-profit businesses from the protection of their RFRAs.<\/p>\n

The new Indiana statute also contains this odd language: \u201cA person whose exercise of religion has been substantially burdened, or is likely to be substantially burdened, by a violation of this chapter may assert the violation or impending violation as a claim or defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding, regardless of whether the state or any other governmental entity is a party to the proceeding<\/i>.\u201d (My italics.) Neither the federal RFRA, nor 18 of the 19 state statutes cited by the Post, <\/i>says anything like this; only the Texas RFRA, passed in 1999, contains similar language.<\/p>\n

What these words mean is, first, that the Indiana statute explicitly recognizes that a for-profit corporation has \u201cfree exercise\u201d rights matching those of individuals or churches. A lot of legal thinkers thought that idea was outlandish until last year\u2019s decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores<\/i><\/a>, <\/i>in which the Court\u2019s five conservatives interpreted the federal RFRA to give some corporate employers a religious veto over their employees\u2019 statutory right to contraceptive coverage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, it’s all about the interpretation; the fact that experts disagree does not indicate one side is lying.\u00a0 But given the movement of business to leave Indiana, I suspect that interpretation is more likely than the claims that this is just like all the other laws.<\/p>\n

(h\/t Kevin Drum<\/a>)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continuing this thread, The Atlantic weighs in on the legal interpretation of the Indiana law: There\u2019s a factual dispute about the new Indiana law. It is called a \u201cReligious Freedom Restoration Act,\u201d like the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed in 1993.* Thus a number of its defenders have claimed \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":452,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions\/452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}