I 
108TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 1547
To restore first amendment protections of religion and religious speech. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
APRIL 1, 2003
Mr. PAUL introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee 
on the Judiciary 
A BILL 
To restore first amendment protections of religion and 
religious speech.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Religious Freedom 
Restoration Act’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress finds the following: 
(1) The freedom to practice religion and to ex-
press religious thought is acknowledged to be one of 
the fundamental and unalienable rights belonging to 
all individuals.
(2) The Framers of the Constitution delib-
erately withheld, in the main body of that document, 
any authority for the Federal Government to meddle 
with the religious affairs or with the free speech of 
the people. Then, as further and more specific pro-
tection for the people, they added the first amend-
ment, which includes the ‘‘establishment clause’’ and 
the ‘‘freedom of speech clause’’ which are as follows: 
‘‘Congress shall make no law respecting an estab-
lishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise 
thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech . . .’’. 
It is of utmost importance to note that the first 
amendment is not a grant of authority to the Fed-
eral Government. To the contrary, it is a specific re-
striction upon the exercise of power by the Federal 
Government. 
(3) For over 150 years, the Court held to this 
historically correct position in interpreting the first 
amendment. During this period, scant mention was 
made to ‘‘The Separation of Church and State’’. 
(4) Then, beginning in 1947, and accelerating 
through the 60’s, the Court abruptly reversed its po-
sition. This was done with no change in the law, ei-
ther by statute or by amendment to the Constitu-
tion. The Court invented the distorted meaning of
the first amendment utilizing the separation of 
‘‘church and state’’ in 1947 in Everson v. Board of 
Education when it announced: The First Amend-
ment has erected a wall between church and state. 
That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We 
could not approve the slightest breach. (Everson v. 
Board of Education; 330 U.S. 1, 18 [1947]). Over 
the past five decades, rulings of the United States 
Supreme Court have served to infringe upon the 
rights of Americans to enjoy freedom of speech re-
lating to religious matters. Such infringements in-
clude the outlawing of prayer in schools and of the 
display of the Ten Commandments in public places. 
These rulings have not reflected a neutrality toward 
religious denominations but a hostility toward reli-
gious thought. They have served to undermine the 
foundation of not only our moral code but our sys-
tem of law and justice. 
(5) In making this abrupt change, the Court ig-
nored all historical precedent established previously 
by the Court, the wording of the First Amendment, 
and the intent of its framers. The rulings are legally 
irrational and without foundation. Although the 
Court presumed to rely upon the First Amendment 
for its authority for these rulings, a review of that
Amendment reveals that said rulings could not pos-
sibly have been based upon its original intent. Con-
sequently, it is incumbent upon this Congress to re-
view not only the rulings of the Court which are in 
question but the wording and history of the First 
Amendment to determine the intent of its framers. 
This abrupt change is found in the following court 
cases: 
(A) ‘‘A verbal prayer offered in a school is 
unconstitutional, even if that prayer is both vol-
untary and denominationally neutral.’’ (Engel 
v. Vitale, 1962, Abington v. Schempp, 1963, 
Commissioner of Education v. School Com-
mittee of Leyden, 1971.) 
(B) ‘‘Freedoms of speech and press are 
guaranteed to students and teachers unless the 
topic is religious, at which time such speech be-
comes unconstitutional.’’ (Stein v. Oshinsky, 
1965, Collins v. Chandler Unified School Dis-
trict, 1981, Bishop v. Aronov, 1991, Duran v. 
Nitsche, 1991.) 
(C) ‘‘It is unconstitutional for students to 
see the Ten Commandments since they might 
read, meditate upon, respect, or obey them.’’ 
(Stone v. Graham, 1980, Ring v. Grand Forks
through the Constitution is bestowed upon the Con-
gress and the Congress alone. 
(6) A fundamental maxim of law is, whenever 
the intent of a statute or a constitution is in ques-
tion, to refer to the words of its framers to deter-
mine their intent and use this intent as the true in-
tent of the law. 
(7) The intent of the First Amendment was and 
is clear on these two points: The Federal Govern-
ment was prohibited from enacting any laws which 
would favor one religious denomination over another 
and the Federal Government has no power to forbid 
or prohibit any mention of religion, the Ten Com-
mandments or reference to God in civic dialog. 
(8) In its rulings to prohibit Americans from 
saying prayers in school or from displaying the Ten 
Commandments in public places, the Court has re-
lied heavily upon the metaphor, ‘‘Separation of 
Church and State’’. Note that this phrase is no-
where to be found in the First Amendment or any 
other place in the Constitution. 
(9) The metaphor, ‘‘Separation of Church and 
State’’, was extracted, out of context, from a letter 
from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists in 
reply to a letter from them expressing concern that
the Federal Government might intrude in religious 
matters by favoring one denomination over another. 
Jefferson’s reply was that the First Amendment 
would preclude such intrusion. 
(10) The Court, in its use of Separation of 
Church and State, has given to this phrase a mean-
ing never intended by its author; it took it out of 
context and inverted its meaning and intent. The 
complete text of Jefferson’s letter is found in Jeffer-
son, Writings, Vol. XVI, pp. 281–282, to the Dan-
bury Baptist Association on January 1, 1802. 
(11) Justice William Rehnquist made an exten-
sive study of the history of the First Amendment. In 
his dissent in Wallace v. Jaffree (472 U.S. 38, 48, 
n. 30 [1984],) he stated: ‘‘There is simply no histor-
ical foundation for the proposition that the Framers 
intended to build the ‘wall of separation’ that was 
constitutionalized in Everson. . . . But the greatest 
injury of the ‘wall’ notion is its mischievous diver-
sion of judges from the actual intentions of the 
drafters of the Bill of Rights. . . . [N]o amount of 
repetition of historical errors in judicial opinions can 
make the errors true. The ‘wall of separation be-
tween church and state’ is a metaphor based on bad 
history. . . . It should be frankly and explicitly
abandoned. . . . Our perception has been clouded 
not by the Constitution but by the mists of an un-
necessary metaphor. It would come as much of a 
shock to those who drafted the Bill of Rights, as it 
will to a large number of thoughtful Americans 
today, to learn that the Constitution, as construed 
by the majority, prohibits the Alabama Legislature 
from endorsing prayer. George Washington himself, 
at the request of the very Congress which passed the 
Bill of Rights, proclaimed a day of public thanks-
giving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging 
with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of 
Almighty God. History must judge whether it was 
the Father of his Country in 1789, or a majority of 
the Court today, which has strayed from the mean-
ing of the Establishment Clause.’’
(12) As Justice Rehnquist states, the greatest 
injury of the ‘‘wall’’ notion is its ‘‘mischievous diver-
sion of judges from the actual intentions of the 
drafters of the Bill of Rights. . . .’’ It is necessary 
to review not only Jefferson’s intent in his use of 
this ‘‘wall’’, but his involvement or noninvolvement 
in the drafting of the First Amendment, and the in-
tent of the framers of the First Amendment.
(13) Jefferson was neither the author of nor a 
coauthor of the First Amendment. He cannot be 
considered as a source of legal authority on this sub-
ject. The Court, if it had wished to rely upon Jeffer-
son to determine the true and original intent of the 
First Amendment, could have served themselves and 
the American people well by referring to Jefferson’s 
admonition to Judge William Johnson regarding the 
determination of the original intent of a statute or 
a constitution: ‘‘On every question of construction, 
carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitu-
tion was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in 
the debates, and instead of trying what meaning 
may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against 
it, conform to the probable one in which it was 
passed.’’ (Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspond-
ence, and Miscellanies, From the Papers of Thomas 
Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, editor [Bos-
ton: Gray and Bowen, 1830, Vol. IV., p. 373,] to 
Judge William Johnson on June 12, 1823).
(14) The principal authors of the First Amend-
ment, the record reveals, were Fisher Ames and El-
bridge Gerry of Massachusetts, not Thomas Jeffer-
son. Others who participated were John Vining of 
Delaware, Daniel Carroll and Charles Carroll of
Maryland, Benjamin Huntington, Roger Sherman 
and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut, William 
Paterson of New Jersey, and James Madison and 
George Mason of Virginia. Thomas Jefferson is not 
found in the record as having participated. (The De-
bates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United 
States [Washington, D.C.; Gales and Seaton, 1834], 
Vol. I, pp. 440–948, June 8–September 24, 1789.) 
(15) George Mason, a member of the Constitu-
tional Convention and recognized as ‘‘The Father of 
the Bill of Rights’’, submitted this proposal for the 
wording of the First Amendment: ‘‘All men have an 
equal, natural and unalienable right to the free exer-
cise of religion, according to the dictates of con-
science; and that no particular sect or society of 
Christians ought to be favored or established by law 
in preference to others.’’ (Kate Mason Rowland, The 
Life of George Mason [New York: G.P. Putnam’s 
Sons, 1892,] Vol I, p. 244.)
(16) The Father of the Constitution, James 
Madison, submitted the following wording for the 
First Amendment: ‘‘The civil rights of none shall be 
abridged on account of religious belief or worship, 
nor shall any national religion be established.’’ (The 
Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the