The Georgia legislative session is in its final stretch, and there is an important piece of legislation which would protect the God-given, constitutional right to religious freedom of every Georgian from state and local government overreach. The governor’s version of the Georgia Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) passed out of the Georgia Senate earlier this month and is now up for a full House vote. As a Georgian, this bill hits home for me.

In January of 2023, I was serving as a police officer in Port Wentworth. I had been at the department for about nine months fulfilling a childhood dream of becoming a police officer. I grew up in the area and was thrilled to have the opportunity to serve my local community. All was well until one day while off-duty, I shared a paraphrase of Ephesians 5 on my personal Facebook page. “God designed marriage. Marriage refers to Christ and the church. That’s why there is no such thing as homosexual marriage.” I had been reading “This Momentary Marriage” by pastor and author John Piper when I was struck by the beauty of God’s design for marriage. That is, marriage was created by God to reflect and serve as a metaphor for Christ’s sacrificial love for His bride the church. Little did I know that sharing this deeply held religious belief would lead to me being effectively forced out of my job as a police officer.

My supervisors ordered me to remove my post, saying it was the “same thing as saying the N-word.” I disagreed and declined to do so, expressing my concerns that my religious freedom was being infringed. I was then led to believe I had been fired when my major ordered me to turn in everything that belonged to the city. After turning everything in, I was told I was being placed on administrative leave while the city investigated me. Once the investigation was complete, I was cleared of all wrongdoing, yet my command staff still insisted I keep my “offensive” Christians beliefs to myself. You can quote Scripture verbatim, I was told, but offer up no commentary, opinion, or sermon of Scripture. Given an ultimatum, resign now or be fired the next time someone finds my Christian beliefs offensive, I made the difficult decision to resign.

But I’m not the only Georgia public servant who faced similar fallout due to religious speech. Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran dedicated over 30 years of his life to public service as a first responder. He first served in his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana, working his way up there from rookie firefighter to fire chief, a post he assumed in 1999. He then served as Atlanta’s Fire Chief beginning in 2008 until his exemplary record was noticed by President Obama. The president then appointed Chief Cochran to the highest office in the firefighter profession, the U.S. Fire Administrator for the United States Fire Administration. He served as “America’s fire chief” until the city of Atlanta in 2010 asked him to come back to resume his post as their Fire Chief.

Chief Cochran, active in his local church as a deacon and Bible study leader, wrote a book called “Who Told You That You Were Naked?” This book talked about the fall of Adam and how men can be rescued from their sin only in Christ. His book briefly covered the clear biblical teaching about human sexuality, that sex has been reserved for marriage between a man and a woman. Following complaints and criticism, the city of Atlanta suspended Chief Cochran. And even after finding that he had not discriminated against anyone, the city still fired him. Alliance Defending Freedom represented Chief Cochran and filed a suit against Atlanta. A federal court ruled that the city fired him because he did not get permission to write the book. The court found that this requirement was an unconstitutional prior restraint on his speech. In 2018, Atlanta agreed to pay its former fire chief $1.2 million.

Both departments placed a significant burden on my and Chief Cochran’s free exercise of religion. Essentially, they said that if we wanted to work for them, we had to check our faith at the door. Georgia’s proposed Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) would provide far better protections and legal options for all Georgians of faith who might encounter situations similar to those encountered by Chief Cochran and myself.

The RFRA would require that the government have a legitimate, compelling interest to substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion and that the government pursues the least restrictive means possible of furthering such compelling government interest. Anyone in Georgia whose religious exercise has been burdened in violation of the RFRA would have the opportunity to assert a claim or defense and obtain appropriate relief against the government.

Georgia’s RFRA would raise religious freedom from its current status as a third-class right with almost no protection at all in Georgia to a first-class right, on the same level with and providing the same protections as our freedom of speech. It would safeguard the right of Christians (and those of other faiths) to live and witness in public according to their faith.

It’s been over 30 years since a nearly unanimous Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed into law the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. However, the Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that the federal RFRA did not apply to state and local governments. Thus, states had to take action. Already, 39 other states have RFRAs in place, by statute or judicial precedent, that protect the ability of Americans of diverse faiths to practice their religion, free from government intrusion and infringement. It is time Georgia joins these other states by passing the RFRA with the governor’s language into law.

This important bill is close to its final vote on the House floor, but it will need support from as many Georgia state representatives as possible to ensure its passage. Big business interests are working behind the scenes to kill the bill. They claim RFRA is bad for business, that Georgia will suffer as a result. But this is the same worn-out argument we hear every time a state wants to do something in support of faith, family, or freedom. The reality is, no one has ever shown good evidence that a RFRA has damaged a state’s economy. The states with RFRAs continue to rank at the top of every “business friendly states” list, and businesses that pause expansion or threaten to pull out of a state inevitably are shown to have increased their footprint. Georgians need to know these dire warnings ring hollow, and that RFRA is beneficial to Georgians and their businesses.

Taylor Hawkins, who is representing the 1st Amendment Partnership and serves as the lead lobbyist for RFRA in Georgia this session, explained to me that the RFRA will serve Georgians well. “Right now, Georgia has a glaring gap in its protection of a fundamental First Amendment right — religious freedom. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) by State Senator Ed Setzler simply restores those protections to their original intent, placing them on equal footing with freedom of speech and other fundamental rights. Thirty-nine states and the federal government have already enacted similar laws to prevent government overreach. It’s time for Georgia to do the same.”