Executive order on religion sparks fight
Civil liberties groups say Trump action could permit bias against gays, women, other beliefs
President Trump could sign a controversial executive order on religious freedom as early as Thursday, and civil liberties groups are gearing up for a fight.
Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and the Human Rights Campaign plan to immediately file legal challenges against the order if it is as broad as a draft that leaked this year.
They’re concerned Trump’s actions will enable discrimination against gays and religious minorities and allow many employers to deny birth control services in the health care plans they offer.
“It would create an unprecedented license to discriminate with taxpayers’ funds, undermine women’s health care and elevate one narrow set of religious beliefs over all others,” said Sarah Warbelow, legal director for the Human Rights Campaign.
Trump is likely to at least discuss the executive order Thursday, which is the National Day of Prayer.
The scene at the White House is set for a signing. “There could be no better day to sign an executive order on religious freedom than the National Day of Prayer,” said Mat Staver who heads the Liberty Counsel, a legal group that has fought same- sex marriage.
Even as the Trump administration finalizes its plans, the opposition has begun: Gay and civil rights advocates protested in front of the White House Wednesday, saying the pending executive order is the latest Trump administration action that attacks the rights of immigrants, Muslims, women and members of the LGBTQ community.
Religious conservatives have long pushed Trump to renew what they said is an “appreciation for religious freedom” that the Obama administration undermined despite a law created in 1993 to protect religious freedom.
“It’s simply bringing the federal government back in line with” the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said last month about the need for an executive order.
Ryan Anderson, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said the executive order could “clarify in a strengthening way” how to apply the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which says a government can “substantially burden” a person’s exercise of religion only if it advances an important government interest — and does so in the least restrictive way possible.
“If the prior administration interpreted existing federal law in a way that constricted religious liberty, this would be returning it to a robust understanding of religious liberty,” Anderson said.
During his campaign, Trump pledged that the “first priority of my administration will be to preserve and protect our religious liberty.”
Religious conservatives waited anx- iously for action — and some were disappointed when the White House announced in January that Trump would not undo Obama’s executive order protecting employees from antiLGBTQ workplace discrimination while working for federal contractors.
The administration emphasized that Trump was proud to be the first Republican presidential nominee to mention the LGBTQ community in his nomination acceptance speech and “is determined to protect the rights of all Americans, including the LGBTQ community.”
Perkins said the religious freedom executive order has been delayed in part because “there are some counterviews” within the administration about whether it’s necessary.
The directive would primarily affect organizations that receive a significant amount of federal funding to provide services such as homeless shelters, hospice care and child welfare services, the Warbelow said.