ATLANTA – A marathon hearing about legislation to enshrine religious freedom in Georgia law produced no outcome but clarified the fears of those on both sides of the issue.
The Georgia Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed the state Senate along party lines earlier this month. A committee of the House of Representatives spent four hours vetting the proposal on Wednesday, then ended without final action on the measure.
Democrats, with the help of a Republican, nearly succeeded in derailing the GOP bill, but it survived for possible passage in a future hearing.
Senate Bill 36 says government “shall not substantially burden” a person’s exercise of religion except “in furtherance of a compelling government interest.”
Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, said he drafted it with help from Gov. Brian Kemp’s office.
It is a necessary protection against government intrusion into religious practices and would bring Georgia in line with 39 other states with a similar statute, Setzler and his supporters said.
Twenty-nine people testified for and against the bill, many of them religious figures such as Bishop John E. Citizen, a Pentecostal pastor in Powder Springs.
He said he supported the legislation because he didn’t want the government dictating whom his church must hire and serve.
“I want to be left to do my worship my way, the way God intended me to do it,” he said. “I’m not going to push my agenda onto you, but don’t push your agenda onto me.”
Opponents noted that only a handful of states have such a law without counterbalancing safeguards for marginalized groups. And Setzler’s refusal to include an anti-discrimination clause in SB 36 was evidence for them that the intent was to wield religious freedom as both a shield against government and a sword against gays, lesbians, transgender people and others outside the heterosexual mainstream.
They said the lack of an anti-discrimination clause would allow private actors to refuse services on religious grounds, including landlords, adoption agencies, and medical dispensaries.
“We want to be protected by the state of Georgia and we’re asking you to add that language to the bill,” said Michael Schulte, a Lutheran pastor in Decatur who said nearly half of his congregation identifies as LGBTQ+.
“They are the people who will be discriminated against if this bill is passed,” he said. “And that is so unfair and it’s so unjust, and to me it is not Christ-like.”
Rep. Stacey Evans, D-Atlanta, pressed Setzler for evidence that religious freedoms were being violated in Georgia and that such protections were needed. She asked him five times to cite specific cases.
Setzler could only produce examples from other states, though an advocate he brought to testify with him offered a couple of local instances.
One involved a Gwinnett County student who was prohibited from distributing religious literature on campus. Another involved a counselor at Augusta State University who asserted that her religious rights were compromised by having to counsel LGBTQ students.
The students complained, then the university put her on a remediation plan and she sued in federal court. The court sided against her.
A lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union said religion had been used to justify atrocities in America’s past, including the massacre of Native Americans and the enslavement of Black people.
Racial discrimination has been prohibited by federal law since the 1960s, but no such protections exist for those with sexual identities outside the mainstream, except on a local basis. Eighteen jurisdictions in Georgia have passed ordinances protecting the rights of LGBTQ people.
Opponents of SB 36 fear that a statewide religious freedom law would pre-empt those local protections, despite Setzler’s assurances that it would not.
One Republican, Rep. Deborah Silcox from Sandy Springs, pressed Setzler on that issue, and later sided with Democrats in a vote against passage.
Opponents briefly had the upper hand. With at least one Republican absent and the acting chairman abstaining, SB 36 failed to pass in that first House Judiciary Committee vote. But Republicans rallied and with the help of Rep. Matt Reeves, R-Duluth, the acting chairman, they approved a motion to reconsider SB 36 before adjourning the meeting.
That means the committee can revisit the measure at a future meeting.