— by Chuck Witt, WinCity Voices —
One of the bills working its way through the Kentucky Senate is Senate Bill 60, introduced by Senator Steve Rawlings (11th District, Boone County). The bill is introduced as: “AN ACT relating to restoring religious liberty.”
Fairness.org describes the bill as “the Jackpot Justice” bill for Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF was represented at the hearing for the bill and is a national legal defense group that traditionally takes on what it considers “religious freedom” legislation. It was the primary group defending Kim Davis, the Rowan County clerk who was successfully sued for failing to carry out her required duties when she refused to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple, citing her actions as based on “God’s authority.”
Fairness.org suggests that ADF could rake in millions of Kentucky tax dollars by suing local governments that uphold anti-discrimination laws and that “all state and local laws, ordinances, rules, regulations, and policies could be subverted by someone asserting ‘religious freedom’.”
Like so many bills emanating from the Kentucky legislature, the title of this Act is somewhat devious because it is not about restoring religious liberty but about making religious beliefs the support mechanism for refusing to honor the rights of others, most specifically the LGBTQ community. But it could also be applied to refusing service to someone of a different race, asserting some sort of “religious” grounds for doing so.
It was reported that one individual supporting the bill complained about being required to provide service to someone with whom they differed “on religious grounds” but admitted that the situation had never occurred in their business.
There is some interesting phraseology in the bill. Section (2) reads, “Government action shall not substantially [bold added] burden a person’s freedom of religion. The right to act or refuse to act in a manner motivated by a sincerely [bold added] held religious belief may not be substantially [bold added] burdened…”
It should be easy to see that these descriptive terms inject a great deal of ambivalence in the law and give pause to any legal analyst how the law could be effectively adjudicated while these terms prevail.
Section (1) attempts to define a “government” entity and includes “the Commonwealth or any political subdivision of the Commonwealth, or any city, county, urban-county government, charter county government, consolidated local government, unified local government, municipality, instrumentality, or public official authorized by law in the commonwealth.” [bold, underline, and Italics in original].
It seems obvious that a legislature that continually touts its desire to return more control to local governments is acting in reverse and taking local control from those government entities. Further, any official in any county or city whose position is authorized by state law could face an individual lawsuit should they misstep and impose on the “sincerely held belief” of an individual.
It would certainly be interesting to see how this law might be applied to someone asserting a “sincerely held belief” in Satanism, Wiccan, Falun Gong, Scientology, etc.
Even though Section (1)(b)1 attempts to define “substantially burden” it fails because it refers again to “a sincerely held” belief.
A further failure of this bill lies in Section (2)(b)(4), which states, “... this statute applies to all government action whether adopted before or after the effective date of this Act.” That is retroactive punishment, which is generally ruled by law as unconstitutional.
All-in-all, this bill is unnecessary and dangerous and simply another attempt to impose religious dogma into the everyday activities of business and government. It purports to make itself about “religious liberty” but is, in fact, an imposition of religion into a secular society, one that seeks to provide service to all individuals, regardless of their beliefs.
Senate Bill 60 should be voted down, but considering the composition of the Kentucky legislature and its propensity to acquiesce to anything that smacks of religious freedom, it will sail through the legislature.
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Written by Chuck Witt, a retired architect, a former newspaper columnist, and a lifelong resident of Winchester. Cross-posted from Win City Voices.
