Another day, another "religious freedom" bill on the verge of becoming law. The latest comes with a hint of irony: It hails from Arkansas, the home state of President Bill Clinton, the original signer of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act—the law now held up by conservative legislatures as the model for religious protections. Clinton himself had nice things to say about the act when he signed it in 1993, noting that it upheld “the principle that our laws and institutions should not impede or hinder but rather should protect and preserve fundamental religious liberties.”

But the cultural climate has changed since, and it seems the Arkansas legislature knows it. The bill approved Tuesday takes things farther than the federal statute and even Indiana’s maligned iteration, by adding language so far unseen in this new wave of legislation.

The bill is similar to the Indiana measure in that it allows any person or business whose “exercise of religion” has been “substantially burdened” to assert the violation as either a claim or a defense in a judicial proceeding. This ostensibly includes cases where a local ordinance compels businesses to not discriminate towards LGBT people.

In the event the victim of discrimination brings suit against the business, the locality would likely join the action, since it’s interested in enforcement of its nondiscrimination edicts. But at that point, the new Arkansas law would require the locality to show that nondiscrimination toward gays and lesbians “is essential to further a compelling government interest.” The italicized language is exclusive to Arkansas, and presumably would lead courts to afford great deference to the religious beliefs of the business owners vis-à-vis the customers or the municipality’s interest in a nondiscriminatory environment.

The bill’s definition of “substantial burden” on religion also seems broader because it specifically singles out any action designed “to prevent, inhibit, or curtail religiously-motivated practice consistent with a sincerely held religious belief”—these are the oft-cited wedding-vendor scenarios. And “religious belief” itself is defined nebulously as “the ability to act or refuse to act . . . whether or not the exercise is compulsory or central to a larger system of religious belief.” It’s not hard to imagine the range of attitudes that fall into this definition—including a flat denial as “God told me it’s wrong for me to serve you.”