North Dakota Religious-Liberty Amendment Fails

The North Dakota proposed constitutional amendment that would have adopted the "burden/compelling interest" for religious-liberty claims failed yesterday by a wide margin.  See previous posts for commentary supporting the amendment by me along with others.  I hope the message here is that North Dakotans didn't see enough immediate threats to religious freedom from state and local laws in their relatively "high religious observance" state.  They may also have been convinced that this proposed amendment went somewhat further than the statutes and constitutional doctrines in other states in allowing religion to claim exemption from generally applicable laws (for example, the triggering burden did not need to be "substantial").  I don't think the differences would have had much effect in the application of a test that courts have generally applied in sensible ways.  But a possible lesson here for religious-liberty advocates (applicable in other contexts too) is to beware of pushing the envelope too much.