Overview
Religious Freedom Restoration Acts are laws intended to protect people and organizations when government rules substantially burden religious exercise. The federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 followed a period of constitutional debate about how courts should evaluate laws that affect religious practice.
The subject is difficult because legal protection for religious exercise must be considered alongside equal treatment, the rights of people who hold nonreligious convictions, and the government’s obligation not to establish or prefer a religion. Courts have therefore treated different parts of the federal and state frameworks in different ways.
A question of balance
At the center of RFRA debates is how to protect sincere conscience while ensuring that exemptions do not impose disproportionate legal burdens on other people or give one category of belief a preferred status.
Why these laws were proposed
Earlier Supreme Court decisions had accepted generally applicable limits on religious conduct when those limits applied across faiths. Supporters of RFRA sought a stronger standard of review: when government substantially burdens religious exercise, the government should generally need a compelling justification and should use the least restrictive means available.
The federal statute was later limited by the Supreme Court’s 1997 decision in City of Boerne v. Flores, which held that Congress had exceeded its enforcement power under the Fourteenth Amendment when applying the law to state and local governments. The federal statute continued to apply to federal action, while states developed their own approaches.
Equal protection and secular convictions
Critics of religious exemptions argue that legal privileges should not depend solely on membership in a religion. A neutral framework might protect sincerely held religious and nonreligious convictions alike, provided that the law does not favor one worldview over another and does not undermine the rights of others.
Supporters respond that religious exercise has a distinctive constitutional history and that carefully structured exemptions can preserve freedom of conscience. The disagreement is not simply about religion versus secularism; it also concerns the scope of government power and the practical effects of exemptions.
Topics covered in this essay
- Federal legislation: background, the 1993 Act, its constitutional limitation, reactions and related proposals.
- State legislation: how RFRA-style protections developed at the state level.
- Additional federal efforts: the Religious Liberty Protection Act and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
Further reading
For a broader treatment of religion and law, see the site’s religion and law collection. Related background is also available in the religious freedom and human rights essays.