Montana’s Governor is on a Roll — This Time He Protects Religious Freedom of Licensed Professionals

Governor Greg Gianforte of Montana is doing everything he can to protect the freedom we take for granted. He recently signed bills to protect life in the womb. He also signed a bill protecting the religious freedom of licensed professionals.

The First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause is not just a few words strung together. The power of those words, enshrined in the founding document, means that Christians are free to live their faith as well as believe and practice that faith.

Living out our faith happens everywhere we go, including in the workplace.

HB 433 bars discrimination based on the free exercise of religion and the freedom of speech and expression in the real estate industry and other professionals that require a state license. The law also bars an investigation of an individual for unprofessional conduct if the complaint is based on the individual’s free exercise of religion.

Such complaints reek of anti-religious retaliation.

“Americans should be free to live and work consistent with their religious beliefs without fear of unjust punishment from the government,” Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Greg Chafuen said. “As the Supreme Court wrote in the ADF case Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, to discriminate on the basis of religious identity ‘is odious to our Constitution…and cannot stand..'”

Things don’t bode well for a country founded on religious freedom where individuals are still fighting to maintain that freedom 246 years later. But that’s what happens when we concede to secularism. Our religious liberty is worth fighting for. Our faith shouldn’t be confined to Sunday worship and the home. We get to live out our faith every day and everywhere, including on the job.

Photo credit: American Life League (Creative Commons) – Some Rights Reserved

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