Religious refusal laws allow service providers to refuse to do their job based on a religious objection. These laws are invariably intended to allow anti-LGBTQ discrimination, or to interfere with patients’ access to reproductive healthcare.

There is no legitimate reason to legalize discrimination in this fashion. Medical professionals who refuse to serve patients based on their sexual orientation or gender identity are unfit to practice medicine. The same applies to county clerks who wish to discriminate against LGBTQ couples. Retail employees agree to a transactional job, and should not be allowed to deny service to a customer because the employee does not approve of what the customer is buying, such as contraception.

Religious accommodations should be discussed between employees and employers, but religious refusal laws improperly shift the burden of dealing with religious objections onto patients and customers. The FFRF Action Fund opposes all such laws.