The Atlantic

Religious Liberty or Discrimination?

Attorney General Jeff Sessions instructed federal agencies to strongly favor faith-related legal exemptions on Friday, imperiling protections for women and LGBT Americans.
Source: Carlos Barria / Reuters

Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a government-wide memo to bolster federal protections for religious liberties on Friday, a move that could also weaken the federal government’s ability to prevent gender and LGBT discrimination.

In the 25-page memo, Sessions outlines 20 principles of religious liberty for federal departments and agencies to observe. The principles don’t create new protections against religious discrimination; instead, they instruct officials to give greater deference to religious-liberty claims under existing statutory and judicial protections.

“Except in the narrowest circumstances, no one should be forced to choose between

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Atlantic

The Atlantic7 min readAmerican Government
Could South Carolina Change Everything?
For more than four decades, South Carolina has been the decisive contest in the Republican presidential primaries—the state most likely to anoint the GOP’s eventual nominee. On Saturday, South Carolina seems poised to play that role again. Since the
The Atlantic4 min read
Hayao Miyazaki’s Anti-war Fantasia
Once, in a windowless conference room, I got into an argument with a minor Japanese-government official about Hayao Miyazaki. This was in 2017, three years after the director had announced his latest retirement from filmmaking. His final project was
The Atlantic5 min readAmerican Government
What Nikki Haley Is Trying to Prove
This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Nikki Haley faces terrible odds in her home state of

Related Books & Audiobooks