Defying Criticism, Arkansas Legislature Passes Bill on Religious Freedom - New York Times

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., — Despite intensifying criticism from business leaders both within and outside of Arkansas, the state legislature on Tuesday passed its version of a measure billed as a religious freedom law, joining Indiana in a swirl of controversy that shows little sign of calming.

The bill, passed when the General Assembly concurred on three amendments from the State Senate, now goes to the state’s Republican governor, Asa Hutchinson, who expressed reservations about an earlier bill but more recently said he would sign the measure if it “reaches my desk in similar form as to what has been passed in 20 other states.” The Arkansas Senate passed the measure last week.

While there were several attempts up until the last minute to add a clause to the bill that would explicitly bar discrimination of gays and lesbians, a measure that Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana pledged to push through his Legislature, the sponsors of the bill in the Arkansas General Assembly rejected such moves.

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”If you start shaving out exemptions in laws, next thing you know, you’ll gut the law because everyone will want an exemption,” said State Senator Bart Hester, a Republican and one if the bill’s lead supporters.

Business resistance to the bills in both states continued to ratchet up, with Gap and Levi Strauss joining Walmart, Apple, Yelp and other major corporations in expressing disapproval. On Monday, the chief executive of Acxiom, a marketing technology company based in Little Rock that employs nearly 1,600 statewide, urged the governor to veto a bill that was “a deliberate vehicle for enabling discrimination.”

The attention turns to Governor Hutchinson, a moderate Republican who ran on a jobs platform and managed to extend a tailored form of Medicaid expansion in this Republican-controlled state.

”I think Indiana has no question had the front position in this spotlight,” said Chad Griffin, a native Arkansan and the president of the Human Rights Coalition, a gay rights group. “That spotlight I think will very quickly be front and center on Gov Hutchinson as he weighs this decision.”

Video

Play Video|0:53

Indiana Governor on ‘Confusion’ Over Law

Indiana Governor on ‘Confusion’ Over Law

Gov. Mike Pence, Republican of Indiana, says that the religious freedom law passed in the state was never intended to give a “license to discriminate” against gay and lesbian couples.

Video By Reuters on Publish Date March 31, 2015. Photo by Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images.

Campbell Roberton reported from Little Rock, Ark., and Richard Perez-Pena from New York.

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