On Monday, the Supreme Court will decide one of the most controversial cases in recent memory, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which asks whether religious employers must offer contraceptive coverage to employees. But regardless of the verdict, the GOP’s scorched-earth attack of the Affordable Care Act has already claimed its primary victim: religious freedom.

The Hobby Lobby blockbuster has been decades in the making. In fact, it has its origins in another landmark Supreme Court decision from a quarter century ago, Employment Division v. Smith. In Smith, the Supreme Court was asked whether the First Amendment’s protection of religious freedom shielded Native American worshippers who used peyote in religious ceremonies from enforcement of anti-drug laws. The Court’s decision in 1990, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, landed like a thunderclap. The Court ruled against the worshippers, and Justice Scalia wrote that religious people had no presumptive exemption from general laws, no matter how minor or unimportant. As long as the law wasn’t specifically directed against a religious group—as long as the law was “neutral and generally applicable”—the Constitution offered the pious no protection. If the law prohibited wine, then sacrament would be forbidden; and if a courthouse demanded bare heads, then Jewish petitioners would have to remove their skullcaps.

The sweeping decision outraged the entire political spectrum, and the public outcry led to swift legislative action. If the Constitution didn’t sufficiently protect religious freedom, then Congress and the state legislatures would do so. In the coming years, the federal government and most states passed variations on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. These new laws acted as a “legislative fix” to the Supreme Court’s decision. Under the RFRAs, laws and regulations would be closely scrutinized by the courts whenever they burdened religious freedom. Now, only if a government mandate was particularly necessary would it trump sincere religious objections. Laws against human sacrifice would always apply, no matter how religiously central the practice; but a sincere Jehovah’s witness would not be compelled to assist in the production of weapons.

The remarkable thing about the Smith decision’s aftermath was the overwhelming consensus. Nearly everyone agreed that the Court’s result was morally unacceptable and needed to be changed. The Federal RFRA gained the backing of everyone from the ACLU to the Traditional Values Coalition, and it passed unanimously in the House and with 97 votes in the Senate. There was no Right and Left on this issue, just widespread agreement: the state ought to burden religious practice only when absolutely necessary.

But in the last two years, a matter of consensus has become a partisan wedge issue. And that’s largely due to the enlisting of RFRA in the GOP’s unceasing attack on President Barack Obama and his signature achievement, the Affordable Healthcare Act.