Connecticut to Boycott Indiana Over RFRA, Forgets It Has Its Own
By Emily Zanotti on 3.30.15 | 1:10PM
President Obama isn't the only person who has selective memory when it comes to voting for and passing a Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
This morning, the governor of Connecticut, Dan Malloy, announced that he would be the first governor in the union to sign an executive order limiting state-sponsored travel to Indiana because of Indiana's ostensibly "discriminatory practices." He was so proud of this that he sent not one but two tweets patting himself on the back for his progressive stance on the subject, how he will not allow states to "turn back the clock" on all the progress we've made in the last two decades, and how he is standing up for truth, justice and the American way.
But Governor Dan Malloy has a teeny-tiny problem. Turns out, Connecticut has a RFRA, enacted in 1993, shortly after the Federal government passed theirs. And it's almost identical to the law that Indiana recently passed. It reads, in part:
(a) The state or any political subdivision of the state shall not burden a person’s exercise of religion under section 3 of article first of the Constitution of the state even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability, except as provided in subsection (b) of this section.
(b) The state or any political subdivision of the state may burden a person’s exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest, and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.
(c) A person whose exercise of religion has been burdened in violation of the provisions of this section may assert that violation as a claim or defense in a judicial proceeding and obtain appropriate relief against the state or any political subdivision of the state.
The Washington Post even pointed it out on Friday, when they were taking special interest groups to task for boycotting Indiana but conveniently forgetting to boycott the 19 other states that have their own Religious Freedom Restoration Acts. So unless he's planning on banning state reimbursements for any travel within his own state, he's definitely got a consisentcy problem.
http://spectator.org/blog/62230/connecticut-boycott-indiana-over-rfra-forgets-it-has-its-own
