Amendments to Arizona’s religious freedom law were demagogued to death this week by a mob of pundits and politicians who warned that the law would usher in a new era of Jim Crow for gay people. “You can believe anything you want,” said CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin. “You can’t turn away gay people from your store–unless this law becomes effective.”
Toobin’s claim, widely echoed in the media, was false. Arizona–like 28 other states–includes no provision in its public accommodation law for gay people. In other words, it was and still is legal in most of the country for restaurants to turn away gay people, but you never hear of that happening. On Thursday, I asked the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s leading gay rights organization, if they could provide any examples of gay people being discriminated. In the age of social media, you’d certainly hear about such cases if they occurred, but the Human Rights Campaign still hasn’t responded to a request for comment.
Discrimination against public accommodations doesn’t occur in America because America is an overwhelmingly tolerant country, and there’s no reason to think people would suddenly turn into bigots if Arizona’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act were modified.
As a bipartisan group of legal scholars explained in a letter e
discrimination doesn’t occur against gay people at public accommodations. First, Americans are overwhelmingly tolerant. Second, even if a business owner were intolerant, kicking a gay person out of his store would be terrible for business.
Could come into conflict.
RFRA:
aren’t any known examples of gay people being turned away by restaurants and stores. That’s because Americans are a tolerant people But where are the examples of that actually happening? I contacted the Human Rights Campaign on Thursday asking for any examples of gay people being discrminated against at public accommodations You’d certainly. I contacted but
That’s because America is a country of tolerant people, and such mean-spirited actions
other words, it is currently legal for businesses to And yet there
all the commotion for nothing?
pre-empt…
“It was clarifying two issues,” one of them that it applies to business as welll one of them was the issue in Hobby Lobby itself, …. the Arizona law would have made it clear that the state RFRA applies to the state burdens … … … …
“Until the Arizona law came up and all the commotion ensued, it never occurred to me that RFRA didn’t apply to civil suits. Certainly the free exercise clause is applied to civil suits and all other aspects of the 1st Amendment apply to civil suits. The irony about the Arizona law is that I actually think the law was quite unnecessary. But it certainly wasn’t dangerous.”
“It was unnecessary because they already had a RFRA and this was just clarifying some things that probably would have been–the courts probably would have come out this way anyway. The clarifications are not of a surprising nature. They were saying basically that the law means what it probably meant anyway. Usually you don’t need to clarify things unless the courts had gone the other way, and they had not.”
If a public accommodation law were challenged under RFRA, what would happen?
“I think it all depends,” said McConnell. “For the most part, I think the public accommodation laws are going to win out. But I could imagine a circumstance where you have somebody renting out a bedroom in their house and they have children they’re trying to bring out in a particular way, and there would be some very specific conflict with their religion that I could imagine. If the couple could go anywhere and it’s no real interference with their ability to find housing–these cases are just not all one way or the other. They depend powerfully on the particular circumstance.”
How is the federal religious restoration act different from the Arizona law that was just passed this week.
But they may have been unnecessary
Public accommodation laws:
