Political Quotes

“Unlike our European forebears, the Framers made clear that our Nation would have no state church. Instead, under the First Amendment, all will be protected in the free exercise of the religion of their choosing, and we have a proud tradition of conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, working together to protect this free exercise right. In the 1963 case of Sherbert v. Verner, the liberal Justice William Brennan mandated that any government intrusion into one's free exercise must meet the most stringent standard of judicial review, strict scrutiny. It was actually the conservative Justice Antonin Scalia who wrote the 1990 opinion in Employment Division v. Smith that rolled back the protections of Sherbert. Fortunately, 3 years later, a Democrat Congress and a Democrat President, Bill Clinton, rallied large, bipartisan majorities to legislatively overturn Smith in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, otherwise known as RFRA, and restores strict scrutiny when the government seeks to invade the free exercise of religion. RFRA had 170 cosponsors. The gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) were original cosponsors. It passed by a voice vote in the House and 97-3 in the Senate. On July 21, 2014, President Obama signed Executive Order 11478 banning Federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in hiring.…”