Oregon Governor Signs Religious Garb Bill

 

Today Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski signed a bill that allows public school teachers within the state to wear religious clothing required by their religious faith in their classrooms.

 

As Oregon HB 3686, the bill passed both legislative branches within the state overwhelmingly. It comes on the heels of Oregon's Workplace Religious Freedom Act signed into law last year. Oregon has made significant strides to positively address holy day accommodations and the "undue hardship" business standard under federal Title VII law. And today the matter of religious "identity" expression in public schools is at last resolved, particularly the wearing of religious apparel that does not represent an effort to proselytize students or coworkers. The governor, labor commissioner and education secretary are working on standardized guidelines to help school districts throughout the state correctly apply the new law.

 

The bill signed today addresses discrimination as a result of reactionary forces to immigration in the early part of the 20th Century.  Most prominent amongst the groups at that time was the infamous Ku Klux Klan. The original discriminatory law was intended to prevent Roman Catholics from teaching in Oregon's public schools - hence the requirement that no teacher could wear religious dress in the classroom.

 

Surprisingly not all civil rights groups were in favor of the new bill.

 

The American Civil Liberties Union made their opposition to the legislation very clear to the governor as they insisted students should have a religion-free environment in public school.

 

However, given the multicultural society that Oregon has become, most felt such a law was outdated and its discrimination unjustifiable.

 

Greg Hamilton, president of the Northwest Religious Liberty Association, Rhonda Bolton, administration assistant for NRLA, and Pastor Doug Clayville, NRLA vice president for Oregon, were on hand for the signing ceremony.

 

Effort to Control Religious Speech Losing Support - Remains a Serious Danger

"This morning there is bad news and there is excellent news from Geneva,” says James Standish, the Adventist Church’s director of UN relations.  “The bad news is that the dangerous effort to limit religious speech that goes by the title of the 'defamation of religions' resolution passed the UN Human Rights Council. The excellent news is that support is down significantly from last year and the opposition substantially increased.”

The "defamation of religions resolution" has been proposed every year for a decade at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, and is seen as an important step towards the sponsor nation's goal of creating an international treaty to ban speech they disapprove of.

This year the vote showed a remarkable improvement from last year.   Only 20 nations voted in favor of the resolution, down from 23 last year, a 13% drop in support. Even more significantly, the number of nations on the Council opposing the resolution increased from 11 to 17 - a 54% increase in opposition in a year. There are fewer nations sitting on the fence - only 8 nations abstained this year, down from 13 last year.

"As people of faith, we are very sensitive to rhetoric that is disrespectful of religion," says Standish, "nevertheless, we believe the risks associated with regulating speech relating to religion that is not proximately related to acts of violence, substantially outweighs the likely benefits. Indeed, national laws that mirror the defamation of religions concept, are currently being misused to settle personal disputes and to marginalize religious minorities. We cannot afford to rely on a failed national model as the basis of a new international legal norm."

The International Religious Liberty Association published its “Statement of Concern about Proposals Regarding Defamation of Religions” written by its Board of Experts in September 2009. The full statement is available at www.irla.org  In addition,  Asma Jahangir, the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief at the UN has consistently voiced concerns about the resolution. 

 “We have momentum on our side,” says Standish, “but we can’t take our eyes off this issue. The effort to propose a binding treaty continues and will come up again in the Fall  in Geneva, and the defamation resolution will come up again in the full General Assembly at the end of the year. We will be there standing for the essential liberty to speak freely about faith.”