Just what happened today at the Indiana Statehouse?
In light of the recent “compromise” on the RFRA which was signed into law today, we would like to express our thoughts on what happened. First of all, the compromise was released this morning, giving us little time to analyze the legal language. Moreover, we had no time to ask questions and get clarification on the bill. At this point, we are left confused and wondering if Indiana just passed a change to a very good RFRA law that will put its application and interpretation into the hands of judges rather than giving our judges standards by which to judge free exercise of religion claims.
The process of introducing a bill, ramming it through both houses of the Legislature and signed into law at such speed that they had to use legislative tricks to get it done is bad governance. We will never know anything about the legislative history and neither will the courts who will ultimately be charged with interpreting the compromise to see how it applies to the citizens of Indiana. This compromise was created in secret, with negotiations with business leaders, the LGBT community, and politicians. What was missing were members of the religious and civic communities who supported the original law in the first place! After the secret compromise was finalized, they used a bill already in Conference Committee to bring about this change. SB 50 was originally a bill about challenges to a candidate’s eligibility to seek office and had nothing to do with “antidiscrimination safeguards” that was signed into law today.
IAHE Indiana Association of Home Educators
Lacking public hearings, explanations, and the public scrutiny that bills normally receive, we are left with many unanswered questions. Instead of public discourse, all we had were secret meetings followed by a press conference and a press release. IAHE is still not certain how or if this compromise will affect the homeschooling community. We think it won’t change a homeschooler’s right to invoke the RFRA should the state or local government trample on our free exercise of religion, but we are uncertain how else it could affect Indiana’s homeschooling community. We will, as we have time to analyze it more, provide information once we, ourselves have our questions answered and have a better grasp of this new law. The problem we face is that everyone has gone home for the Easter weekend and the Governor is on his way to Europe to join his wife. We all feel a bit like we’ve been kicked in the gut and we have nowhere to turn to get answers.