The Left’s Fake Conversion To Religious Liberty– www.lifenews.com

The progressive legal establishment for years treated religious freedom exemptions as obstacles to be dismantled, threatening the livelihoods, consciences, and institutions of Christian business owners, healthcare workers, and even nuns.

Now, the left is embracing the very religious-liberty arguments it spent years working to defeat.

Religious exemptions have typically rested on one of two legal foundations: the First Amendment’s protection of religious exercise or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which requires the government to justify substantial burdens on religious practice under the strictest level of judicial scrutiny.

This shift on the left is not merely rhetorical. Hoosier Jews for Choice has sued for religious exemptions from Indiana’s abortion ban, arguing that the law conflicts with Jewish teachings about when life begins. The Latino Christian National Network and other Christian and Jewish organizations have invoked religious freedom in challenges to ICE enforcement near houses of worship and in efforts to protect faith groups that shelter illegal immigrants.