Old culture war erupts in Georgia House as critics blast ‘religious freedom’ bill

Georgia is closer to a so-called religious freedom bill than it has been in nearly a decade after a House panel passed a bill Wednesday.

Acworth Republican Sen. Ed Setzler’s Senate Bill 36 is now teed up for a full House vote, which would send it to Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk.

It’s the farthest a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA bill, has come in Georgia since 2016, when then-Gov. Nathan Deal vetoed a similar measure after it sparked outcry from LGBTQ advocates and large employers in the state.

The nearly decade-long push for religious protections began after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark same-sex marriage ruling in 2015.

Setzler says the bill will protect religious Georgians from state and local governments the same way the First Amendment does at the federal level. He often gives examples of RFRA beneficiaries from other states, including a veiled Muslim woman who was allowed to be photographed unveiled for her driver’s license in a private room by a woman photographer so as not to violate her religion.

Opponents instead refer to examples of same-sex couples denied service at shops or other businesses.

Detractors argue that because Georgia does not have a civil rights law, RFRA bills would provide carte blanche to discriminate against LGBTQ Georgians and others under the fig leaf of religion. At a previous committee hearing, lawmakers inserted an amendment including civil rights protections, but that amendment was eliminated ahead of Wednesday’s vote.

Setzler presented the bill as a compromise because it does not prevent local governments from instituting their own anti-discrimination ordinances.

“This bill specifically takes the middle road, doesn’t go after local ordinances that elevate rights of certain people groups,” he said. “It doesn’t invalidate the rights of people of faith, it takes the middle road. It allows those local ordinances to stay in place while the rights of people of faith have the weight they should receive in our legal system. This balanced approach is not what was taken back in 2016.”

“And I think we recognize by exactly mirroring the federal language, by following our governor insisting on language that does exactly that, nothing more, nothing less, no changes,” he added. “That’s why these amendments came off from committee. We don’t need to make these changes to our federal framework and (instead) simply take the same protections that exist in federal law, apply those protections to state and local governments.”

Atlanta Democratic Rep. Stacey Evans said she would have supported the bill with the civil rights amendment, but she has serious objections without it.

“This bill will give a license to discriminate, that’s exactly what it does,” she said. “And all attempts to make sure that that’s not true, all attempts to make sure that it really is about just making sure that folks can exercise their religious beliefs, all of that could be taken care of if we also put in comprehensive civil rights protections for the state or made sure that local ordinances against discrimination would be respected. Every single time, those amendments were rejected, which tells you the intent of the author here is to discriminate. If it wasn’t his intent, if it wasn’t the intent of this body to discriminate, then why are we opposed to amendments that make it clear that we’re not discriminating?”

The bill could come to a full House vote any time before the end of the legislative session on April 4.