[dragonwriter]

> That law limited religious freedom.

Well, sure, in that it allowed powerful private entities to engage in religious discrimination adversely affecting the practical religious freedom of less powerful entities and individuals, but in terms of government power, it limited government action more than it was prior to the law (which is why the right pushed it).

> It says that if you can prove a compelling interest, and can prove a law is the least restrictive way to do something, you can do it even though it steps on a person's constitutional right to free exercise

No, it didn't. It said that if you couldn't do that, you couldn't enforce a law affecting religious exercise; it didn't allow government anything that was previously prohibited. (This, in practice, tightened the standards on government from what had been established in case law.

> Medicaid and Obamacare are not legal programs to begin with in a strictly constitutional sense.

Ruling that either the ACA as a whole or Medicaid was unconstitutional would be, while both radically inconsistent with generations of case law and hard to justify textually, at least coherent. Ruling that it was constitutional for Congress to establish Medicaid, initially set standards for participation, fund it by annual appropriations, and set new standards and funding, but not apply the new standards to states that wanted to continue operating under the old standards and only take the share of funding that was attributed to the caseload which would be covered by the old standards was completely incoherent from any perspective related to applying any kind of Constitutional principal, and clear and unmistakeable arbitrary legislation from the bench.

[hodwik2]

It, in no unclear terms, says that you can limit free exercise, so long as you live up to two pretty low standards:

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"b. Government may substantially burden a person's exercise of religion only if it demonstrates that application of the burden to the person—

(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest;

and

(2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest."

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This is much less binding than the first amendment: "Congress _shall make no law_ respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"

The constitution provided no exceptions whatsoever. By definition, a law which adds exceptions has moved the bar textually. It is, by definition, unconstitutional.

Again, it was a bad move by conservatives using liberal laws to protect themselves, rather than just pushing for conservative laws.

[dragonwriter]

"only if" is restrictive, not permissive, "if" is permissive, and "if and only if" is both permissive and restrictive.

> This is much less binding than the first amendment:

I understand you view it that way, however, the author's of the bill did it because it was more restrictive on government than the first amendment had been applied by the courts, as it applies to neutral and generally applicable laws with incidental impacts on religious practice.

> The constitution provided no exceptions whatsoever.

OTOH, the constitution provides no qualifications whatsoever on various grants of power to government that it provides, either. The various scrutiny levels (strict, intermediate, and rational basis) serve, at least as regards federal action, to resolve conflicts between unqualified restrictions and unqualified grants of power (its true that other modes of legal interpretation are conceivable -- a strict "newest wins" rule, say, could be applied, in which case the first amendment grants would trump all powers in the "base" Constitution, but all powers granted by later amendments would completely ignore restrictions imposed by the First Amendment. So, say, commerce clause action would be completely prohibited from any impact on religious exercise, but income tax could be deliberately constructed to suppress a given religion with no Constitutional difficulty.)