What matters more: career or faith? In a state that combines a motto of “industry” with a founding narrative driven by a search for religious freedom, perhaps the more important question to ask is: Why do we have to choose one over the other?

On the first day of his administration, Gov. Spencer Cox signed an executive order to state agencies to review regulations related to professions that require a license to participate. At the signing, the governor explained,

Government regulation is often necessary to protect people, but sometimes requirements end up hurting people who are trying to enter an industry or profession. We now have an opportunity to take a fresh look at our licensing requirements to make sure that we don’t have more rules than are necessary and that the rules we have continue to make sense.

This idea could easily be transferred to an equally important matter – religious freedom.

Like occupational licensing regulations, there are legal rules that create burdens on people of faith and religious groups, even though doing so is not the intent of the provision.

In a 2019 Sutherland Institute publication, Howard Slugh and Josh Hammer, of the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty and the First Liberty Institute, respectively, described this challenge:

Adherents of minority faiths are uniquely likely to find their practices restricted by government. This is true whether the majority targets their “unusual” practices, or whether it inadvertently passes laws that conflict with religious obligations that it may not recognize or understand. Religious minorities are at a further disadvantage because they will often lack the political power necessary to block or repeal such laws.

Slugh and Hammer mention a number of specific instances that have resulted in lawsuits: “Muslim prisoners requesting access to halal food, Sikh soldiers seeking permission to wear turbans, Jewish police officers asserting the right to maintain beards, Native Americans petitioning for access to religiously significant eagle feathers, and Amish citizens needing religious exemptions from certain building codes.”

To this list we could add more instances:

• Students who need accommodations to observe religious holy days or to wear religious attire.
• Student groups that seek to maintain adherence to their beliefs among members.
• Medical professionals who cannot participate in certain procedures and seek to refer patients to those who can.

Currently, these types of exemptions come only after a conflict becomes apparent and gains a high profile. Then lawmakers can act to provide the exemption, as happened with religious attire for soldiers and with exemptions from Social Security taxes for the Amish.

Policymakers, however, should not wait until a conflict arises. A proactive effort to identify existing laws and policies that threaten to create burdens on religious exercise could be identified by seeking input from religious groups and people of faith. This effort to sensitize regulators and legislators to the ways in which people of faith – especially minority religions – might be inadvertently burdened by government actions could result in fewer such conflicts in future lawmaking.

Perhaps not every potential conflict can be avoided. In those instances, the application of constitutional principles of free exercise and broad protections from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act can prevent harm.

This type of forward-thinking conflict avoidance holds great promise. Like a regulatory review, a conscientious state effort can propose changes to statute and regulation to lessen and prevent conflicts that threaten the essential religious practice and identity of people of faith.

Not only would such a legal review to support religious freedom proactively protect many religious adherents from harm, it would send the message that we recognize the value of faith to individuals, families and communities, and to a meaningful form of freedom. Our state history and present economic success offers Utah a unique understanding of the value to society of work and faith. Our approach to the impacts of regulation should reflect that understanding.