Tag: “religious liberty”

How the Religious Liberty Executive Order Licenses Discrimination

The following article by Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza and Sharita Gruberg was posted on the Center for American Progress website July 31, 2017:

This column contains a correction.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions speaks during his interview with The Associated Press, July 28, 2017, at the National Police Headquarters in San Salvador, El Salvador.  Credit:  AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

The Trump administration’s draft religious liberty executive order, leaked in February, was explicit in its directives and sweeping in its implications. The order President Donald Trump signed in May—the “Presidential Executive Order Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty”—rather than formally codifying a view of religious liberty or instructing federal agencies on how to interpret the law, tasks the U.S. attorney general—currently Jeff Sessions—with advancing his interpretation of religious liberty through administrative guidance.* Sessions has already taken steps to oppose workplace protections against discrimination for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Now he will begin extending protections for those seeking a license to discriminate.

In recent remarks to the Alliance Defending Freedom, classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-LGBT hate group in part for opposing LGBT rights and supporting a marriage equality ban, Attorney General Sessions suggested he will soon issue guidance dictating how agencies should interpret the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which was passed to protect people from being discriminated against on the basis of their religion. RFRA requires the government to provide a “compelling reason” to “substantially burden” religious exercise. Sessions will likely interpret the “compelling reason” requirement more strictly and the substantial “burden” requirement much more broadly, which would turn this protection against discrimination into an affirmative right to discriminate. Continue reading “How the Religious Liberty Executive Order Licenses Discrimination”

President Trump Wants to Restrict Access to Contraception Under the Guise of Religious Liberty

The following article by Heidi Williamsona nd Claire Markham was posted on the Center for American Progress website June 22, 2017:

AP/Charles Dharapak — Protestors participate in a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, March 25, 2015.

Last month, the Trump administration took two significant actions to curtail women’s access to reproductive health care. On May 4, the president signed an executive order that expands the power of religious refusals in denying access to health care. The order limits the actions that the government can take against individuals and organizations who assert religious beliefs as a reason to deny their employees health care coverage—namely, contraceptive coverage. The order also gives Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a longtime foe of progressive efforts to promote equality and pursue robust civil rights enforcement, broad authority to issue guidance interpreting religious liberty into federal law. Continue reading “President Trump Wants to Restrict Access to Contraception Under the Guise of Religious Liberty”