The proposed Texas RFRA, like the congressional RFRA of 1993, is based upon an erroneous understanding of the religion clauses of the First Amendment. The First Congress specifically applied that stipulation to Congress. The Fourteenth Amendment, as unanimously ruled by the Supreme Court of the United States, applied that stipulation to the states. States shall make no law even respecting an establishment of religion. The Free Exercise Clause clearly states that the free exercise of religion shall not be prohibited.
Words mean things.
James Madison and members of the joint senate-house conference committee which produced the final draft of the religion clauses chose words carefully. If they had meant to say that religion could not be interfered with or restricted or abridged, they would have used those words. The Constitution does not place religion above the law. In 1802 President Thomas Jefferson wrote that the legitimate powers of government reach actions . . . Efforts by frustrated religious bodies to reestablish religion into the laws of the land have been with us from the beginning.