Washington court finds no free exercise right to ignore antidiscrimination law

[phkrause]

In a unanimous en banc ruling issued yesterday, the Supreme Court of the State of Washington rejected a florist's claim that state anti-discrimination statutes did not apply to her religion-based refusal to sell flowers for use in a same-sex wedding ceremony.

read more here: http://religiousliberty.tv/washington-court-finds-no-free-exercise-right-ignore-antidiscrimination-law.html

[Gregory Matthews]

The following is one important aspect of the above decision:

 

But after the passage of RFRA in 1993, the Supreme Court ruled in 1997 in

Boerne v. Flores that Congress could not pass a law that would impact state actions on free exercise. Thus the federal RFRA does not apply to the state of Washington, which is not among 21 states that have passed a state-level version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

Even if Washington state had implemented a version of RFRA, the state supreme court ruled that Stutzman's claim to free exercise would not have survived under its interpretation of a least restrictive means standard.