ALI 2nd Vice President Douglas Laycock, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and a leading expert on the constitutional right to freedom of religion, was interviewed about the controversial new Indiana law by Religion & Politics, an online news journal published the John C. Danforth Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University in St. Louis.
In the interview, Professor Laycock explains that the Indiana law is modeled on the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and that many states have passed similar laws in response to a 1997 Supreme Court ruling that said the federal law could not be applied to the states.
“The critical fact with respect to all the hysteria over Indiana is this: No one has ever won an exemption from a discrimination law under a RFRA standard,” Professor Laycock says. “Few have tried, and none have won. There is absolutely no basis in experience for the charge that these laws are a license to discriminate.” The article is headlined: “Why Law Professor Douglas Laycock Supports Same-Sex Marriage and Indiana’s Religious Freedom Law.”