A North Dakota ballot intitative appears designed to allow anti-gay groups to openly defy bans on discrimination, and it is written so expansively that it could authorize thousands of North Dakotans to outright ignore everything from traffic lights to medical access laws — all in the name of supposedly protecting religous liberty. Under the proposed state constitutional amendment, which appears on state ballots June 12:

Government may not burden a person’s or religious organization’s religious liberty. The right to act or refuse to act in a manner motivated by a sincerely held religious belief may not be burdened unless the government proves it has a compelling governmental interest in infringing the specific act or refusal to act and has used the least restrictive means to further that interest. A burden includes indirect burdens such as withholding benefits, assessing penalties, or an exclusion from programs or access to facilities.

To translate this a bit, many states and the federal government exempt religious believers from some laws that “substantially burden” their religious faith. The North Dakota initiative, however, targets any law that merely “burdens” a person’s religious faith. In other words, even the most minor inconveniences to religious practices would be suspect under the initiative. A person who is running late to church could claim it is illegal to make them obey traffic lights.

Worse, the law could have severe consequences for gay men, lesbians and other groups disfavored by the religious right. As law professor Marci Hamilton explains, the initiative appears worded to bypass the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Christian Legal Society v. Martinez which held that anti-gay groups cannot force state universities to fund them in violation of the university’s anti-discrimination policy.

Nor is the initiative the only example of the religious right trying to be above the law. An appeals court in New Mexico recently rejected an argument by an anti-gay business owner which could have exempted New Mexicans from any anti-discrimination law — including bans on race and gender discrimination — that they have a religious objection to. Similarly, conservatives ranging from the Catholic Bishops to Speaker John Boehner claim that the Constitution gives them sweeping immunity from laws they disagree with. Even conservative Justice Antonin Scalia has rejected the bishops’ view.

ThinkProgress intern Angela Guo contributed to this post.

Though Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL)’s administration has now said it will not follow the Department of Justice’s order to end its voter roll purge, a Republican county elections supervisor’s spokeswoman told ThinkProgress she will not resume the purge effort.

Pinellas County Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark (R) released a statement last Friday saying that her office would not continue the purge:

The accuracy of the voter registration database is of the utmost importance and we will continue our efforts to ensure the information is current. However, we will not use unreliable data.

When asked whether the Scott administration’s decision to defy the Department of Justice order changed anything, Clark spokeswoman Nancy Whitlock told ThinkProgress “No. Ms. Clark’s position remains as stated [on Friday].”

Pinellas County had initially purged 14 voters who the state suspected might not be citizens, but reinstated them when it became clear that Scott administration’s list of “sure-fire non-citizens” was riddled with a gigantic number of errors and the DOJ announced that the purge violated both the Voting Rights Act and the National Voter Registration Act.

Whitlock noted that Clark and other Florida elections supervisors had questioned “not only the accuracy of the information, but also the timing after learning that the state had the list of voters more than a year prior to distributing it.”