Religious Freedom

Who would have thought that late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia would write a judicial opinion severely debilitating the free exercise of religion and democrats like Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy would come to the rescue? This is all true—it happened in the early 1990s—resulting in the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The federal RFRA enjoyed wide bipartisan support in the early 1990s. Yet more recently, various states have tried to enact their own versions of RFRA but have been met with enormous opposition.

What happened to change people’s minds about religious freedom? Are religious freedom laws really “license to discriminate”?

This book seeks to add context to the contemporary debates regarding religious freedom, specifically RFRA, and related laws. Religious freedom laws may not be as bad as some want you to think.