Critics: AG’s religious panel allows bias, cuts rights
WASHINGTON — A new Justice Department task force drew fiery opposition from advocacy groups who charged Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Trump administration officials with attempting to sanction LGBTQ bias and curtail reproductive rights.
“Americans from a wide variety of backgrounds are concerned about what this changing cultural climate means for the future of religious liberty in this country,” Sessions said yesterday, announcing the Religious Liberty Task Force, which will be charged with enforcing DOJ guidance on religious freedom.
Sessions said the move was needed to guard against rules and procedures that trample on Americans’ sincerely held religious beliefs.
“We’ve seen nuns ordered to buy contraceptives,” Sessions said. “Americans from a wide variety of backgrounds are concerned about what this changing cultural climate means for the future of religious liberty in this country.”
But advocacy groups lambasted the move as a thinly veiled attempt to allow discrimination against the LGBTQ community and circumvent protections for women, including access to contraceptives and abortion, under the guise of protecting the right to worship freely.
NARAL called the move “another extremist attempt to deny people the care and services that they need.”
“The Trump admin is out to refuse abortion care, birth control access, and LGBTQ-inclusive care to the American people,” the group said in a statement.
Sarah Warbelow, legal director of Human Rights Campaign, called the new task force “a brazen campaign to erode and limit the rights of LGBTQ people in the name of religion.”
“The Attorney General standing shoulder-toshoulder this morning with anti-LGBTQ extremists tells you everything you need to know about what today’s announcement was really all about,” Warbelow said.
Those joining Sessions at the event included Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker who refused to serve a same-sex couple a wedding cake and challenged a state anti-discrimination law before the Supreme Court.
Officials from the legal advocacy group that represented Phillips, Alliance Defending Freedom, also attended — and called the new task force necessary to protect Americans’ First Amendment rights.
“Too many of the clients ADF represents are risking their businesses, their life savings, and their safety to follow their conscience,” said Kristen Waggoner, senior vice resident of ADF’s legal division. “All Americans should be free to peacefully live and act consistent with their convictions and faith without threat of government punishment.”