California Governor Jerry Brown recently vetoed AB 569, a bill that the Catholic League opposed as “a blatant assault on religious freedom.”
In August, Bill Donohue wrote to every member of the California State Senate. “Under the guise of ‘anti-discrimination,'” he explained, this bill would have barred 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, which was backed by NARAL Pro-Choice California, specifically targeted codes of conduct involving employees’ “reproductive health care decisions.” It was, Donohue pointed out, “a thinly disguised attempt to impose radical pro-abortion policies on religious organizations.”
Gov. Brown’s veto is a welcome victory for religious liberty.
