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Arkansas Governor in Spotlight Over Religious Freedom Bill - New York Times




Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas has said he will sign a religious freedom bill, but faces growing pressure from businesses like Walmart that oppose it. Danny Johnston/Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — After Arkansas lawmakers passed a measure billed as necessary to protect religious freedom, the focus turns to Gov. Asa Hutchinson and whether he will sign it into law.


While Mr. Hutchinson, a Republican, had promised to do so, pressure has been building from several sectors, including the state’s largest employer, Walmart, to veto the measure. He is expected to make a statement Wednesday. Critics say the bill could allow individuals and businesses to discriminate against gay men and lesbians.


The bill, which easily cleared the state House by lopsided margins, would likely become law even Governor Hutchinson uses his veto power because only a simple majority is needed to override the veto. .


The legislation has created a political rift in the state, with Mark Stodola, the mayor of Little Rock, sending a letter to Governor Hutchinson this week urging him to veto the bill, saying it would have “a negative impact on our state’s image.”


The Little Rock Chamber of Commerce, the Arkansas Municipal League and other civic groups have also come out against the legislation.


In Indiana, Gov. Mike Pence was also in a tenuous political predicament Wednesday as he sought to satisfy both the business interests that have threatened to punish the state for its new religious freedom law and local conservatives who fought for the measure and do not want to see it diluted.


Governor Pence has said he wants to modify the law, but he has not indicated how he could do so without undermining it. He rejected claims that it would allow private businesses to deny service to gay men and lesbians and said the criticism was based on a “perception problem” that additional legislation could fix.


“I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be helpful to move legislation this week that makes it clear that this law does not give businesses the right to discriminate against anyone,” Governor Pence, a Republican, said at a news conference in Indianapolis on Tuesday.


Governor Pence acknowledged that the law had become a threat to the state’s reputation and economy, with companies and organizations signaling that they would respond by avoiding Indiana. Mr. Pence said he had been on the phone with business leaders from around the country, adding, “We want to make it clear that Indiana’s open for business.”



‘Religious Freedom’ Laws Across the States





20 states have “religious freedom” laws. Indiana’s law, written more expansively than other states, has caused a national uproar. Critics say it could be used by businesses to deny services to gay and lesbian couples.




12 states introduced legislation this year. Despite opposition to Indiana’s law, Arkansas’s legislature passed a similar bill on Tuesday. Similar bills have stalled in Georgia and North Carolina.






20 states have “Religious Freedom” laws. Indiana’s law, written more expansively than other states, andcaused a national uproar. Critics say it could be used by businesses to deny services to gay and lesbian couples.




12 states introduced legislation this year. Despite opposition to Indiana’s law, Arkansas’s legislature passed a similar bill on Tuesday. Similar bills have stalled in Georgia and North Carolina.






The Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group, announced an expanding list of Fortune 500 corporations opposing “bills that could allow individuals and businesses to discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and other minorities,” The list now includes American Airlines, Orbitz, Wells Fargo and Microsoft.


The bill in Arkansas is similar to the Indiana law, but both diverge in certain respects from the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That act was passed in 1993 and signed into law by President Bill Clinton, Arkansas’s most famous political son.


But the political context has changed widely since. The federal law was spurred by an effort to protect Native Americans in danger of losing their jobs because of religious ceremonies that involved an illegal drug, peyote. Now the backdrop is often perceived to be the cultural division over same-sex marriages.


Both states’ laws allow for larger corporations, if they are substantially owned by members with strong religious convictions, to claim that a ruling or mandate violates their religious faith, something reserved for individuals or family businesses in other versions of the law. Both allow religious parties to go to court to head off a “likely” state action that they fear will impinge on their beliefs, even if it has not yet happened.


The Arkansas act contains another difference in wording, several legal experts said, that could make it harder for the government to override a claim of religious exemption. The state, according to the Arkansas bill, must show that a law or requirement that someone is challenging is “essential” to the furtherance of a compelling governmental interest, a word that is absent from the federal law and those in other states, including Indiana.


“It has way too broad an application,” said John DiPippa, a law professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, who had spoken before the legislature in 2011 on behalf of a narrower and ultimately unsuccessful version of the bill. “I never anticipated or supported applying it to for-profit companies and certainly never anticipated it applying to actions outside of government.”


Though Arkansas has now joined Indiana as a target of criticism from businesses, condemnation of Indiana’s law continued to grow.


Nascar and the Indiana Pacers have come out opposing the bill, and days before the N.C.A.A. is to hold the men’s basketball Final Four in Indianapolis, the group’s president, Mark Emmert, said that the new law “strikes at the core values of what higher education in America is all about.” The city’s mayor, Greg Ballard, a Republican, and the state Chamber of Commerce have called on lawmakers to change the statute.


Business executives, notably leaders of tech companies like Apple and Yelp, have spoken out against the law, and Angie’s List cited it in canceling plans to expand its facilities in Indianapolis. Entertainers have canceled tour dates in the state, a gaming convention is considering going elsewhere and the governors of Connecticut, New York and Washington have imposed bans on state-funded travel to Indiana.


On the other hand, likely Republican presidential contenders — prominent among them Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio — have supported the law.


Even the White House joined in. “This piece of legislation flies in the face of the kinds of values that people all across the country strongly support,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Tuesday at his daily briefing.


Doug McMillon, the chief executive of Walmart, said the bill in Arkansas “threatens to undermine the spirit of inclusion present throughout the state,” while the chief executive of Acxiom, a marketing technology company based in Little Rock that employs nearly 1,600 statewide, described the bill as “a deliberate vehicle for enabling discrimination.”


Governor Hutchinson, who ran on a jobs platform, said in an earlier statement that he was “pleased that the legislature is continuing to look at ways to assure balance and fairness in the legislation.”


But with the votes on Tuesday, the decision now lies with him whether this balance has been effectively struck. His office was quiet on Tuesday, with a spokesman declining to comment, though the governor did meet in the morning with Democratic legislators who had concerns about the bill.


The future of similar measures elsewhere remained unclear. In Georgia, where the legislature will adjourn for the year on Thursday, opponents of a pending proposal rallied Tuesday outside the State Capitol. Although the bill’s path has been turbulent — a Monday committee hearing about the measure was canceled — supporters and critics alike said it could be approved in the session’s final hours. North Carolina is far earlier in its debate. Religious freedom proposals surfaced last week in both the House and the Senate, and neither has faced a vote at even the committee level.


In Indiana, lawmakers are expected to go to a conference committee as early as Wednesday morning. They are likely to use an unrelated bill as a vehicle to create the clarification Mr. Pence has requested. Aides to lawmakers said they expected passage to happen as early as Thursday, but it is not certain that a measure acceptable to the legislature will be acceptable to critics.


And supporters of the laws urged political leaders not to bend to pressure. Micah Clark, executive director of the American Family Association of Indiana, said he feared “a capitulation that enshrines homosexual behavior as a special right in Indiana.” Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said, “The government shouldn’t force religious businesses and churches to participate in wedding ceremonies contrary to their owners’ beliefs.”


Proponents of Arkansas’s bill insisted that there was no intent to discriminate against gays and lesbians, pointing out that there had been several previous attempts to pass such a law well before same-sex marriage came to be seen as nearly inevitable.


Critics of the law countered that the same legislators who presented this bill sponsored another law earlier in the session that forbids towns and cities to pass their own anti-discrimination ordinances, a law that scuttled ordinances that would have protected gays and lesbians. Mr. Hutchinson did not sign that bill when it came to his desk, but allowed it to become law.



Campbell Robertson reported from Little Rock, and Richard Pérez-Peña from New York. Erik Eckholm contributed reporting from New York, and Monica Davey from Chicago.











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