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'Religious freedom' law may conflict with local ordinances on equal treatment

Herald-Times (Bloomington, IN) - 3/27/2015

March 27--Indiana's "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" likely will result in conflict between state law and local ordinances promoting equality, city and county leaders said Thursday, just hours after Gov. Mike Pence signed the measure into law.

The city of Bloomington and Monroe County both have ordinances in place that promote equal opportunity in employment, housing, education and access to public accommodation regardless of race, sex, religion, color, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry or disability.

County Democratic Party Chairman Mark Fraley said the newly signed law, which goes into effect July 1 and is intended to allow Hoosier business owners to refuse service to customers based on religious beliefs, easily could create conflict with those local measures.

"This is obviously going to create a lot of legal confusion between state and local government," Fraley said.

But the extent of that confusion and any potential conflict isn't yet clear.

Barbara McKinney, the city's director of human rights and assistant city attorney, said there certainly could be conflict, but the extent of that will depend on how people invoke the state measure in lawsuits and how judges interpret its intent.

Monroe County Attorney Jeff Cockerill said because the state law seems to carry negative implications for people protected under the human rights ordinances, it will raise issues once it goes into effect.

There are implications for the city and the possibility of "unforeseen consequences," and lawsuits, whether actionable or not, for anything the government regulates, not just those things that fall within the category of human rights, McKinney said.

Just what those consequences will be, though, won't be clear until a case arises, she said.

McKinney questioned the necessity of the state law, describing it as a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

Cockerill said religious freedom already is protected locally under the human rights ordinance.

And Fraley said there has been a balance and respect for religion that the newly signed state law "throws out the window" by providing the ability to use faith as a cover for discrimination.

That's offensive, both to those gay and lesbian Hoosiers being denied respect, and to people of faith whose religion is being used as a "political football," he said.

It also undermines significant progress that the state has made toward equality, Fraley said.

Mayor Mark Kruzan said the measure is aimed at institutionalizing bigotry, calling it a "so-called religious freedom law."

"That's how it will be thought of in the short term and how it will be remembered by history," Kruzan said in an email Thursday. "It's bad policy morally, ethically and economically."

And Beth Applegate, a member of the city's human rights commission, said it puts Indiana "on the wrong side of history."

"This bill is an attack on equality for all Hoosiers," Applegate said, describing it as a backlash to recent Supreme Court rulings on same-sex marriage.

The law hits particularly close to home for Applegate because it denies her, her life partner, Trish Kerle, and many others equal treatment "simply because of who we are," she said.

State vs. federal

Why did Indiana pass a "Religious Freedom Restoration Act" when there's already a federal law in place? It's because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal law, passed by Congress in 1993, doesn't apply to state and local governments. In 1997 as part of its decision in City of Boerne v. Flores, the court said the states retained the freedom to enforce the spirit of the federal law in the manner they deem most appropriate.

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