Dive Brief:

• A new law signed last week by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence known as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, is causing an uproar and many retailers are front and center.

• The law allows companies to discriminate in employment and serving customers, based on religious belief, and is widely seen as targeting LGBT people.

• Apple CEO Tim Cook, who months ago made news with an open letter coming out as gay, penned another letter over the weekend saying the law is terrible for business, calling it “dangerous.”

Dive Insight:

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is defending the law he signed last week as just one of 20 around the country and similar to a federal statute signed into law in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, but he probably learned over the weekend that times have changed. 

A federal law enacted in 1994 reversed a Supreme Court ruling that said employees using peyote weren’t eligible for unemployment benefits even though their drug use was part of their Native American religion. 

Indiana’s law, meanwhile, is widely seen as a way to allow businesses to discriminate against gay people, and that is leading to the strong reaction against it, which includes public figures like Charles Barkley and businesses like Salesforce. 

The bill purports to protect retailers, but several business groups in Indiana had opposed the measure, and many are taking pains to advertise their openness to serve anyone, regardless of their religious or sexual identity.

“These bills rationalize injustice by pretending to defend something many of us hold dear. They go against the very principles our nation was founded on, and they have the potential to undo decades of progress toward greater equality,” Cook wrote in the Washington Post Sunday. “I have great reverence for religious freedom. As a child, I was baptized in a Baptist church, and faith has always been an important part of my life. I was never taught, nor do I believe, that religion should be used as an excuse to discriminate.”