While the highest justices in the US prepared to legalize gay marriage last year, a new campaign arose among social conservatives. Its aim was to counter the supreme court’s ruling with state laws creating religious exemptions. Many saw such laws as licenses to discriminate.

Conservative lawmakers argued the bills were necessary to protect religious beliefs. But because the majority of states still lack anti-discrimination protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, rights groups accused such lawmakers of designing loopholes in civil rights.

Now, as lawmakers head back to state capitols for a new year, states from Georgia to Colorado are readying for more battles over religious freedom, as officials file bills or start to lobby for them. Advocacy organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) expect a batch of bills attempting to provide religious exemptions for adoption agencies, businesses and schools.

In Georgia, state legislators have filed a “religious freedom restoration” bill. It is a revamped version of a bill introduced last year that was controversial enough to divide the red state’s Republican party.

“It has nothing to do with bakers or florists or same-sex weddings,” said Republican state senator Josh McKoon, the author of a bill pre-filed with the legislature, in a December 2015 op-ed in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “It protects people of all faiths, including religious minorities.”

The bill provides the ability to sue state and and local governments if they “substantially burden” a person’s religious beliefs.

In a debate last year, concerned the act could hurt state tourism, some Republican legislators triedto add anti-discrimination protections for the LGBT community.

The bill died when their peers rejected the measure, causing Atlanta-area representative Beth Beskin, a Republican, to ask the Atlanta Journal Constitution: if the bill isn’t an anti-LGBT measure, “how can there be a problem with making that explicit in the bill?”

In Missouri and Kansas, the ACLU expects bills that would require colleges to exempt faith groups from anti-discrimination policies, and finance religious student-run organizations. A Republican candidate for Missouri attorney general has made religious exemptions for businesses part of his campaign platform.

In Kentucky, some expected lawmakers to end the requirement that county clerks put their name on marriage licenses. Three days before Christmas, the state’s governor did it himself, unilaterally, through executive order. The move was a bow to Rowan county clerk Kim Davis, who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples and became, briefly, a star of the religious right.

In the US Congress, some have already endorsed the First Amendment Defense Act, which would allow religiously affiliated organizations exemption from anti-discrimination protections. The ACLU expects to see this legislation resurrected in the new year.

In Florida, civil rights activists believe elected officials will try to breathe fresh life into legislation that would let private foster care and adoption agencies refuse couples because of religious or moral objections.

‘What we’ve got is division’

Religious freedom restoration acts – known as “RFRA” laws – came to national attention in the spring of 2015, when Indiana passed a bill many saw as lacking adequate anti-discrimination protections for the LGBT community. Under intense scrutiny, lawmakers amended the bill to include protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, but Arkansas passed its own measure soon afterward. Other Republican-led states, such as Arizona, rejected similar measures, dodging some of the controversy that has swirled around the laws.

The federal RFRA law was enacted in 1993, signed by then president Bill Clinton, a Democrat. The law, which had bipartisan support, was proposed after Native Americans lost a court case over the use of peyote, illegal under federal law, in a traditional ceremony.

The court ruled the government did not need a “compelling interest” to burden religion, because the burden was incidental to neutral laws. RFRA acts were meant to restore the need for government to have a “compelling interest” to burden religion. In 1997, courts ruled that states needed to pass their own laws for RFRA protections to apply. Several blue states passed such laws. (Connecticut passed its own RFRA in 1993.)

Until recently, religious freedom laws were largely off the agenda in state capitols. Twenty-two states bar discrimination based on sexual orientation, 19 have protections for gender identity and 21 limit the government’s ability to burden the free exercise of religion. Just four states – Connecticut, Rhode Island, Illinois and New Mexico – have all three.

“What we’ve got is division,” said William Pound, executive director of the National Conference of State Legislatures. He predicted a “significant number of bills” seeking to advance either religious rights or the civil rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

“You’ve got the Democratic states reacting very differently, a lot of the time, than the Republican states to these issues,” Pound said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.