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The World

Religion
Bill Gutted

/-

A few weeks ago, Jewish activists were
saying Kaddish over the Religious
Liberty Protection Act because of the
shortened congressional calendar and
mounting opposition from some
Christian right forces.
Late last week, the bill staged a
miraculous recovery. But in the
process, a House subcommittee caved
in to pressure from fringe groups on
the Christian right, gutting the mea-
sure and making continuing Jewish
support problematic.
RLPA is the congressional fix for
the Religious Freedom Restoration Act
(RF RA), the 1993 law making it hard-
er for states ro restrict religious prac-
tices, which was overturned by the
Supreme Court last year because the
justices felt Congress was usurping
powers that belong to the stares.
The new, narrower RLPA focuses
on preventing governments from
using public money or zoning ordi-
nances to interfere with religious prac-
tices, a legislative gambit designed to
help the measure pass judicial scrutiny.
But home school advocate Michael
Farris argued that one of the key pro-
visions — which invokes the com-
merce clause of the Constitution to
give the federal government the
authority to tell the states what to do
— was improper.
Many civil rights laws are based on
that constitutional principle, but
Farris argued that using the commerce
clause would reduce religious freedom
to the status of a commercial transac-
tion, and that the law would result in
the taxation of churches.
Constitutional experts scoffed at
those claims, and other Christian
groups, including the Christian
Coalition and the Family Research
Council, supported the measure.
But Farris succeeded in convincing
Republicans on the committee to strip
the provisions dealing with the com-
merce clause.
"What happened is that religious
right groups — actually, the far fringes
of the religious right — intimidated
the congressional leadership ro adopt
this strange view of the commerce
clause," said Marc Stern, legal director
for the American Jewish Congress and
one of RLPA's drafters. "Farris suc-
ceeded in getting people to call in to
Congress, and the Republican leader-
ship was scared religious conservatives
will walk in November."
The measure still includes some
religious protections, he said, but
what's left of RLPA is clearly weaker.

"

— James Besser

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8/14
1998

Detroit Jewish News

35