DC Accepted Papers Paper:
Religious Freedom and the Mobilization of Hate?: An Analysis of the Effect of Religious Freedom Restoration Acts on the Prevalence of Hate Crimes in the U.S. States
*Names in bold indicate Presenter
In 1993, then-President Bill Clinton signed into law the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). After the federal RFRA experienced a high level of scrutiny and discordance, many states adopted their own version of an RFRA aimed at protecting religious beliefs from any burden of the state. Many advocates feared the diffusion of RFRAs would contribute to an increase in instances of discrimination, particularly against members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ+) community, especially at a time of increasing issue salience for LGBTQ+ rights. Despite the suspected consequences of the “Age of the RFRA” for the LGBTQ+ community, a limited number of studies have assessed the effects of states adopting RFRAs. This paper begins to fill this gap by exploring the effect of state-level RFRA adoption on mobilizing hate crimes. Using the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Universal Crime Reporting data to measure the number of hate crimes across the states and a comparative interrupted time-series approach, I examine the mechanisms by which RFRAs may produce negative outcomes for members of the LGBTQ+ community.
