of museum operations at the whitney plantation and we are beginning our tour today in a historic friedmann's church which was build 1870 by people who lived on the opposite side of the river in pallina, louisiana. this was donated by the descendants of the original founders of that congregation. they bought the land in 1870, two parcells of land for the express purpose of building a house of worship. in the sale document they named their structure the anti -- they named their an gre gacongregati antiyolk congregation. this was a significant church for newly freed slaves on the east bank of the river and so it's really important in talking about the lives of people who saw freedom at the end of the war. so we like to start here in this building so we can see what happened to people, some of the things that they cared about after freedom came. >> the whitney plantation is the only plantation in the state of louisiana that is exclusively dedicated to telling the stories of enslaved people and so this land that we're on right now is -- was historically known as habitation hi dell and our owner p

let's bring in our cnn legal analyst and attorney avery friedmann joining us from new york.od to see both of you. so what is this restoring that was taken away? >> what this bill seeks to do fredericka is to return the state of the law as it pertains to government action against free exercise of religion. it seeks to restore state of the law back to where it was in 1989. and the reason i say that is because in 1990, the u.s. supreme court in an opinion written by justice scalia having to do with native americans using peote in religious rituals, he said the lower standard which is called intermediate review is what is required and under intermediate review the government can interfere with your free exercise of religion if there's an important governmental interest that's furthered and it's substantially related to that important government interest. what this bill wants to do is increase it back to the strict scrutiny level of judicial review which existed in free exercise cases prior to 1990. >> so avery, do you see this as season issue of free exercise of religion? >> no,

of museum operations at the whitney plantation and we are beginning our tour today in a historic friedmann'schurch which was build 1870 by people who lived on the opposite side of the river in pallina, louisiana. this was donated by the descendants of the original founders of that congregation. they bought the land in 1870, two parcells of land for the express purpose of building a house of worship. in the sale document they named their structure the anti -- they named their an gre gacongregati antiyolk congregation. this was a significant church for newly freed slaves on the east bank of the river and so it's really important in talking about the lives of people who saw freedom at the end of the war. so we like to start here in this building so we can see what happened to people, some of the things that they cared about after freedom came. >> the whitney plantation is the only plantation in the state of louisiana that is exclusively dedicated to telling the stories of enslaved people and so this land that we're on right now is -- was historically known as habitation hi dell and our owner pu