CNA Staff, Apr 3, 2024 / 14:00 pm
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds this week signed legislation to protect religious freedom in her state, joining the majority of U.S. states that have enacted similar laws in recent years.
Reynolds on her website on Tuesday announced that she had signed the Iowa Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) into law. The bill passed the state House and Senate in February.
More than half of U.S. states have passed RFRAs since the federal government passed its version of the law in 1993. That law, signed by then-President Bill Clinton, was passed nearly unanimously by Congress in response to the Supreme Court decision Employment Division v. Smith, which held that a state can enact a law that forbids some religious behaviors so long as the measure is a “neutral law of general applicability.”
The federal RFRA stipulates that any law that “substantially” burdens a person’s religious exercise must be both in “furtherance of a compelling government interest” and must be the least-restrictive means of accomplishing it. State-level RFRAs, including Iowa’s recently passed measure, generally institute similar rules.