
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 17, 1993                   TAG: 9311170029
SECTION: NATL/INTL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM BILL SIGNED

Reversing a Supreme Court decision he said threatened the nation's "first freedom," President Clinton signed a bill Tuesday making it harder for government to interfere with religious practices.

A coalition of civil liberties and religious groups, who foresaw autopsies forced on families and cities meddling in church construction, said the law is the most important for religious freedom since the Bill of Rights was adopted.

"We all have a shared desire here to protect perhaps the most precious of all American liberties - religious freedom," Clinton said.

Until three years ago, such action was considered unnecessary, given the Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of freedom of worship. But in a 1990 ruling involving the use of a drug in an Indian religious ritual, the Supreme Court made it easier for local and federal governments to pass laws that infringe on religious beliefs.

The court upheld laws that infringe on religious freedom as long as they serve a valid government purpose and are not aimed at inhibiting religion.

The law signed by Clinton poses a stricter test - one used by courts before the 1990 ruling. That test requires that restrictive laws serve a compelling government interest in a way that poses the lightest possible burden on religious freedom.

Clinton said the law, which passed easily in Congress, holds government "to a very high level of proof before it interferes with someone's free exercise of religion."

by CNB