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Equality Act

Floor Speech

Date: Feb. 25, 2021
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Civil Liberties and Civil Rights Judicial Branch

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, it is a great day for America when we are advancing the civil rights of all Americans, and that is what the Equality Act does.

All of the free exercise constitutional arguments being advanced today....

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Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, all of the constitutional arguments being advanced today by our colleagues have been decisively repudiated and rejected by their hero, Justice Antonin Scalia, in the 1990 decision Employment Division v. Smith, where Justice Scalia, for the Court, emphasized that there is no religious free exercise exemption from secular laws of universal application, including civil rights laws, including child labor laws, including child abuse laws. And every scoundrel in American history has tried to dress up his or her opposition to other people's civil rights in religious garb.

We saw that in 1964, in the Heart of Atlanta Motel case and in the Ollie's Barbecue case, where motel owners, hotel owners, lunch counter owners came in and said: We have a religious free exercise right not to serve interracial groups or interracial couples. We don't want to allow an interracial couple--you get where I am going.

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