Lawmakers in Georgia are advancing a bill designed to provide religious individuals and institutions even greater protection from laws that they say violate their beliefs, such as a mandate that requires employers to offer health insurance plans that cover elective abortions. 

Sponsors of the bill also say it will protect multiple religions’ beliefs. They noted examples of schools trying to force Native American students to cut their hair shorter than their religious traditions call for, which they say the legislation would prevent. 

Georgia’s state Senate has voted 32-23 to pass Senate Bill 36, which is based on the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That requires the government to show it has a “compelling interest” to require a religious individual to comply with a law that they feel violates their belief.

The Supreme Court ruled that the federal law does not apply to states, and more than 30 states have passed their own version of the law since the ruling. 

The lead sponsor of the Georgia bill, a Republican state senator, Mr. Setzler, said the bill would help prevent the state and local governments from implementing restrictions on religious institutions, such as preventing churches from holding in-person services as occurred during the pandemic.

“RFRA puts the First Amendment right of free exercise on the same level of protection as First Amendment rights of speech, assembly, and press by simply creating a judicial balancing test to weigh out the facts in cases, to make sure that a person’s right to practice their faith versus government powers is matched and balanced and brought together in the fairest way possible,” Mr. Setzler said ahead of the vote on Tuesday.

However, a Democratic state senator, RaShaun Kemp, said the “only thing this bill does” is allow people to “use their religion as a free pass to discriminate.

“Under this bill, someone could deny me, my husband, my son, and my beautiful daughter service at a business and use their religion as a reason to do that,” he said. 

Another Democratic lawmaker, Jason Esteves, said that while other states have passed similar laws, they have certain safeguards that Georgia does not have that protect against discrimination. 

“Georgia is one of the handful of states that does not have a state-level civil rights law,” Mr. Esteves said. “We’re all for religious freedom when it’s appropriately used. But if you want to make sure that it is appropriately used, then you have to have the proper safeguards in place.”

The federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act instituted a more stringent standard for “government actions that substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion,” according to the Congressional Research Service. It was passed in light of the Supreme Court’s Employment Division v. Smith decision, in which the justices held the Constitution’s free exercise clause does not provide exemptions “from compliance with generally applicable laws and does not require the government to show a compelling interest in applying such laws to a particular individual,” the CRS notes. 

Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to clarify that if a government rules poses a “substantial burden” — forcing an individual to choose between following the law or their religious beliefs — the government must present why there is a “compelling government interest” to require their compliance, and that it is the “least restrictive means of furthering that interest.” 

While the law was originally intended to apply to federal and state or local governments, the Supreme Court ruled in the 1997 City of Boerne v. Flores decision that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act did not apply to state or local governments because Congress failed to show a pattern of religious discrimination and thus lacked the authority to enforce the standard at the state and local level. 

In the 1990s and into the early 2000s, states such as Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania passed their own version of the law. However, in recent years, such measures have been the source of debate as traditionally conservative states have tried to adopt the measure. Democrats and liberal activists say the laws will be used to let religious individuals engage in discrimination against members of the LGBT community. 

Lawmakers in Georgia tried to pass a version of the RFRA in 2016. However, the Republican governor at the time, Nathan Deal, vetoed the bill, saying it would let individuals discriminate against others because of their religious views. 

Nearly nine years later, Mr. Setzler says the latest version of the bill is different and would not allow for discrimination. 

A Christian public policy advocacy organization, Citizen Impact, says the latest bill merely gives “Georgians their ‘day in court’ to challenge the government if their local or state government infringed on their religious beliefs.”

Meanwhile, a public affairs representative of the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, Michael Griffin, said in a post on X, “All it does is protect people of faith from having to participate [in] or to support something that goes against their doctrine and beliefs.”

However, the Georgia state director of the LGBT advocacy organization the Human Rights Campaign, Bentley Hudgins, said in a statement that the bill “could lead to LGBTQ+ Georgians — not to mention women, religious minorities and other vulnerable communities — being turned away from a business, denied housing or refused service because of who they are or who they love.”

“Religious freedom is already deeply embedded in the U.S. and Georgia constitutions, and it must not be wielded as a weapon to violate the basic civil rights of others,” the statement said. 

The group claims that the law would be a “license” to ignore anti-discrimination measures. 

The Georgia Chamber of Commerce and the Metro Atlanta Chamber also suggested the legislature should “focus on issues like civil justice reform, infrastructure, and workforce development, which move our state forward and improve the quality of life for all Georgians,” instead of trying to pass an RFRA. 

The bill will now head to the state House, where similar proposals have recently failed. However, due to a shift to the right on social issues among Republicans, the bill is seen as having a better chance of passing the House this year. Governor Kemp has signaled that he would sign such a bill.