From a newly enacted bill:
A financial institution shall not deny or cancel its services to a person, or otherwise discriminate against a person in making available such services or in the terms or conditions of such services, on the basis of:
(1) The person's political opinions, speech, or affiliations;
(2) Except [for a financial institution that claims a religious purpose], the person's religious beliefs, religious exercise, or religious affiliations;
(3) Any factor if it is not a quantitative, impartial, and risk-based standard, including any such factor related to the person's business sector; or
(4) The use of a rating, scoring, analysis, tabulation, or action that considers a social credit score based on factors including:
(A) The person's political opinions, speech, or affiliations;
(B) Except [for a financial institution that claims a religious purpose], the person's religious beliefs, religious exercise, or religious affiliations;
(C) The person's lawful ownership of a firearm;
(D) The person's engagement in the lawful manufacture, distribution, sale, purchase, or use of firearms or ammunition;
(E) The person's engagement in the exploration, production, utilization, transportation, sale, or manufacture of fossil fuel-based energy, timber, mining, or agriculture;
(F) The person's support of the state or federal government in combatting illegal immigration, drug trafficking, or human trafficking;
(G) The person's engagement with, facilitation of, employment by, support of, business relationship with, representation of, or advocacy for any person described in this subsection (c); or
(H) The person's failure to meet or commit to meet, or expected failure to meet, any of the following as long as such person is in compliance with applicable state or federal law:
(i) Environmental standards, including emissions standards, benchmarks, requirements, or disclosures;
(ii) Social governance standards, benchmarks, or requirements, including environmental or social justice;
(iii) Corporate board or company employment composition standards, benchmarks, requirements, or disclosures based on [ace, creed, color, religion, sex, age or national origin]; or
(iv) Policies or procedures requiring or encouraging employee participation in social justice programming, including diversity, equity, or inclusion training.
At least one jurisdiction already bans discrimination based on political opinion in financing (e.g., Howard County, Maryland), but to my knowledge this is the first state to do so. (Federal law and the law in many jurisdictions already generally bans various kinds of financial discrimination based on race, religion, sex, and the like.) Thanks to Prof. Howard Friedman (Religion Clause) for the pointer.
The post Tennessee Generally Bans Political and Religious Discrimination by Financial Institutions appeared first on Reason.com.
