“Citizens should not be left defenseless when their government attempts to burden their ability to live and worship according to their faith,” said Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious freedom group. “This law provides a sensible balancing test for courts to use when reviewing government policies that infringe upon the religious freedom rights of Montanans.”

The new law has received both praise and criticism, including from Shawn Reagor, director of Equality and Economic Justice with the Montana Human Rights Network, who claimed the state’s RFRA “goes against the live-and-let-live values we hold as a state, recent court rulings, and the ordinances of five Montana cities and counties.”

Montana is the 22nd US state to pass a religious freedom restoration act in the past thirty years. These state RFRA laws are the direct result of a landmark 1990 Supreme Court case that made religious freedom a second-class right.

Source: persecution.org