Clinton Signs Bill That Strengthens Religious Freedom

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 adoption of the Bill of Rights.

“We all have a shared desire here to protect perhaps the most precious of all American liberties--religious freedom,” Clinton said in a South Lawn ceremony.

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