Minnesota Human Rights Act Openly Attacked Religious Freedom
After public backlash, both the Minnesota House and Senate voted unanimously to restore religious protections, but further threats loom.
In 2023, the legislature amended the Minnesota Human Rights Act (MHRA) to add anti-discrimination protections for “gender identity” but failed to revise the corresponding religious exemption, effectively attempting to remove it. This year, “gender identity” was added to a list of already protected categories of protections in the MHRA. “Sexual orientation” was already protected by the MHRA, but the term “gender identity” was added explicitly. A religious exemption that had already been in place since 1993 “prohibited the state from forcing religious organizations to comply with the anti-discrimination law provisions with respect to protected categories like sexual orientation when those provisions are inconsistent with a religious organization’s sincerely held beliefs,” said Renee Carlson, general counsel for True North Legal. However, the religious exemption was not updated to include the term “gender identity.” “While we had hoped it was an oversight, the House Judiciary Chair stated on the record that the omission of those words was intentional,”
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