Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on California Governor Jerry Brown’s veto of a bill targeting religious employers:
On Sunday, Gov. Brown vetoed AB 569, a bill that the Catholic League opposed as “a blatant assault on religious freedom.”
As I wrote to every member of the California State Senate in August, “Under the guise of ‘anti-discrimination,'” this bill “would bar religious organizations from establishing faith-based codes of conduct for their employees. So, for example, a Catholic school could not require that its teachers adhere to public and workplace rules of conduct that would model the principles of the Catholic faith to Catholic schoolchildren.”
The bill specifically targeted codes of conduct involving employees’ “reproductive health care decisions.” That, I pointed out, along with “its full-throated endorsement by groups such as NARAL Pro-Choice California, make clear the bill’s true intent: to undermine Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life, by forcing the Church to employ people who publicly reject that teaching. It is a thinly disguised attempt to impose radical pro-abortion policies on religious organizations.”
Gov. Brown’s veto is a welcome victory for religious liberty.
