Once again, we look forward to the opportunity during the 2025 Legislative Session to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Georgia Sen. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, along with 33 other Republican senators, have introduced on January 27th Senate Bill 36 - the new RFRA legislation at the Capitol.
This legislation is important because it provides people of faith with the same protection from state and local government actions that they now have from federal government actions.
This video explains some of the details of what a Religious Freedom Restoration Act can do to protect our citizens’ rights and give the proper responsibility to government. Click here for a short video explaining RFRA: https://vimeo.com/993685685.
RFRA will bring Georgia into line with 37 other states that have taken action to restore a full level of legal protection for people of faith. And nowhere where this legislation has been enacted has it led to any discrimination. In fact, its purpose is to protect people of faith from being discriminated against because of their deeply held religious beliefs.
Under current Georgia law, the freedom of religion has a weak level of legal protection:
Under current federal RFRA law, a claim brought under the “free exercise” clause of the First Amendment is treated as a full constitutional right which must be analyzed using the “strict scrutiny” legal standard. This legal standard simply means that the government may not substantially impact a citizen’s free exercise of their religious faith unless it demonstrates a truly “compelling interest” and that in doing so the government agency must use the “least restrictive means” to achieve its compelling interest.
The Hobby Lobby case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that Christian business-owners could not be required by the federal government to pay for their employees’ abortion-inducing drugs, was decided under the federal RFRA law. A state RFRA would merely apply this same legal analysis to cases arising under state and local law in Georgia.
Then-President Bill Clinton, who signed the federal RFRA law in 1993, put it this way, “But let us never believe that the freedom of religion imposes on any of us some responsibility to run from our convictions. Let us instead respect one another’s faiths, fight to the death to preserve the right of every American to practice whatever convictions he or she has but bring our values back to the table of American discourse to heal our troubled land.”
Thank you to Senator Setzler for leading the way since 2023 in trying to guarantee that Georgians will have the same basic rights the federal RFRA provides to prisoners and soldiers on military bases. (See the map of federal RFRA protections in Georgia.)
Please begin now by praying and contacting your state legislator to encourage him or her to support the RFRA since it has now come up in 2025 legislative session!
Georgia Baptists have prepared resources, including an educational video, prayer guides, action steps and promotional materials for promoting religious freedom in our state. Please check out the following website for more info: https://religiousfreedomga.org/
Mike Griffin is the Public Affairs Representative of the Georgia Baptist Mission Board
