Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan urged the Clinton Adminstration to fight for a strong reading of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, according to notes she wrote in 1996. After the California Supreme Court ruled that a landlord could not refuse to rent to an unmarried couple due to her religious beliefs, Kagan pressed the White House to support her appeal to the US Supreme Court, according to a NYTimes review of recently released documents by the Clinton Library:
“The plurality’s reasoning seems to me quite outrageous — almost as if a court were to hold that a state law does not impose a substantial burden on religion because the complainant is free to move to another state,” Ms. Kagan wrote. “Taken seriously, this kind of reasoning could strip RFRA of any real meaning.”
The Supreme Court ultimately did not accept the landlord's appeal, and later ruled unconstitutional portions of RFRA that applied to the states.
