Democratic Witness Falsely Claims the Equality Act Doesn’t Affect Religious Institutions

O n Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the Equality Act, a sweeping piece of legislation that would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” as classes protected by the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Many Democrats and their allies have suggested the Equality Act would simply codify the Supreme Court’s 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County decision, which outlawed employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or “transgender status.” But the truth is that the Equality Act goes far beyond Bostock in several respects.

It would likely mandate taxpayer funding of abortion and infringe on the conscience rights of medical workers who oppose abortion. As The Economist has warned, it would discriminate against women by allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports.

The Equality Act explicitly states that “(with respect to gender identity) an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.” The bill would also expand the list of public accommodations covered by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which was originally passed to smash racial segregation in the South.

As Abigail Shrier testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, it would allow any male prisoner who says he is a woman to be held at a prison for women. Women’s shelters for victims of domestic violence would have to admit men who say they are women, she said.

Beyond all of that, the Equality Act infringes upon religious liberty — a fact that Democratic senators and their top witness on Wednesday sought to cover up.

“The Equality Act does not affect how religious institutions function,” Alphonso David, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a powerful and well-funded LGBT-rights group, said during questioning by Democratic senator Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) on Wednesday.

But, as University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock has pointed out, the Equality Act “goes very far to stamp out religious exemptions. . . . It regulates religious non-profits. And then it says that [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] does not apply to any claim under the Equality Act. This would be the first time Congress has limited the reach of RFRA. This is not a good-faith attempt to reconcile competing interests. It is an attempt by one side to grab all the disputed territory and to crush the other side.”

During follow-up questioning from GOP senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, David was a bit more forthcoming yet remained evasive on the real implications of the Equality Act for religious liberty.

“This law does not change how religious institutions function — only if those religious institutions open up places of public accommodation,” David said. As an example, he cited a religious institution that opens a restaurant.

When Graham asked David what would happen if a religious institution engaged in secular activity, such as running a school, David replied that “engaging in secular activities in and of itself does not make you a place of public accommodation. What makes you a place of accommodation is whether you’re open to the public — whether or not you’re providing goods and services to the public. If you decided to engage in secular activities but limit those secular activities to those of your faith — without opening to the public — that is very different.”

In other words, the head of the Human Rights Campaign quietly acknowledged that a Catholic school or shelter wouldn’t be subject to the Equality Act’s dictates if it shut its doors to non-Catholic schoolchildren and non-Catholic homeless people. That’s a problem, not just for the non-Catholic schoolchildren and non-Catholic homeless people but also for Catholics who believe their faith compels them to serve all while still upholding their faith’s teachings on sex and marriage.

Mary Rice Hasson of the Ethics and Public Policy Center said during her own testimony at the Senate hearing that the Equality Act “seeks to coerce religious believers to exit the public square unless they’re willing to sacrifice their religious beliefs for today’s reigning ideologies.”

House Democrats passed the Equality Act at the end of February, but it does not have close to the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster in the Senate.