ATLANTA – Gov. Brian Kemp signed controversial religious freedom legislation Friday aimed at preventing government intrusion into Georgians’ rights to exercise their religious beliefs.
The General Assembly’s Republican majorities passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act on Wednesday primarily along party lines.
“It’s common-sense legislation,” Kemp said after signing Senate Bill 36. “Georgians still remain the place where there’s no place for hate.”
The bill closely mirrors a federal RFRA law Congress passed back in 1993. However, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 1997 that the law only applied to the federal government, which has left Georgia lawmakers pushing for years for a state-level RFRA.
Legislative Democrats opposed the bill, arguing it could be used to discriminate against non-Christians and LGBTQ Georgians.
But Republicans defended the measure as applying only to acts by the state and local governments, not to actions by private citizens aimed at other private citizens.
On Friday, Kemp said the RFRA bill builds on past efforts targeting discrimination in Georgia, including a hate-crimes law the General Assembly passed following the murder of Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery near Brunswick by two white men in 2020 and last year’s bill aimed at antisemitism.
RFRA has been championed for years in the legislature almost single-handedly by state Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, unsuccessfully until this year’s session.