Senate Approves Some Protections for Churches!

After a rescheduled committee meeting and a week long delay, the Senate voted tonight to at least add one critical amendment to HB 1663 (D-Sickles) to allow churches, private schools, and other religious organizations to continue to carry out their missions in accordance with their tenants of faith. And that’s a really big deal!

While we’ve spent a good portion of this session explaining the perils of this bill (and its companion SB 868), which elevates “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to a special protected status in Virginia law without meaningful protections for religious liberty, the delays last week were actually a blessing because they gave us more time to have needed conversations with key legislators. In fact, your overwhelming response to our email alerts “This Bill Will Destroy Churches and Religious Schools” and “Shocking Honesty: VA Democrats Really Are Targeting Churches” helped to convince enough Senators to make a critical change to the “public accommodations” component of the bill.

Tonight, the Senate agreed to an amendment that makes clear that religious organizations, including churches, schools, and nonprofit ministries will not be considered a “place of public accommodation” like a for-profit business. This amendment ensures that religious entities can still maintain sex-segregated facilities, perform and host weddings/ceremonies that conform with their faith tenets, carry out church discipline among their members, and determine its own standards for membership, without any threats of frivolous lawsuits.

Unfortunately, the Senate did not consider an amendment we have advanced to address the lack of protection for religious employers, which means religious organizations will no longer be able to legally hold their employees accountable to certain conduct that aligns with its core faith tenets – at least not without the looming threat of expensive lawsuits and government fines. 

While the amendment on public accommodations is significant progress because it will help prevent many churches and religious entities from being unnecessarily targeted over their religious values, there remains the need for stronger protections in hiring and employment so that churches, private religious schools and faith-based organizations can not only hire people of the same faith, but also make sure their employees adhere to certain conduct consistent with the organization’s core faith tenets.

Like SB 868, which has already passed, HB 1663 specifies that a religious corporation, association, educational institution, or society is allowed to hire employees of the same religion, but it does NOT permit a religious organization to require applicants and employees to conform to the religious tenets of the organization.

But this fight is not over yet because HB 1663 now heads back to the House where the amendment will be considered, and we know how some members of the House have been hostile towards religious institutions.

We will keep you posted about what's next, but know that we are going to keep pushing for these amendments in the bill until the very end.

[Note: This morning the House rejected the Senate’s amendment, sending HB 1663 to a conference committee to resolve the differences.]