How to fix the Religious Freedom Restoration Act

Michael C. Dorf thinks the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (the statute cited in the Hobby Lobby case) can be fixed. He writes in Verdict on Justia.com:

To be sure, with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives, and the possibility that Democrats could lose their majority in the Senate in the coming midterm elections, imminent action by Congress is highly unlikely. Nevertheless, at some point a legislative fix may be politically feasible; in the meantime, discussion of what was wrong with Hobby Lobby can inform the public and opinion leaders about how to fix RFRA when the opportunity arises.

In this column, I offer a menu of eight options, some of which could be accomplished in tandem with one or more of the others. No solution is perfect, but that is to be expected: the whole notion of religious accommodations begins from the fact that sometimes the public interest as expressed through the law conflicts with individual conscience. An accommodation, almost by definition, is a compromise between conflicting objectives.

Dorf writes in detail on all eight options (even the “do nothing” option, which he does not advocate).

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