LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Arkansas lawmakers gave final approval Thursday to a revised religious objections measure after Gov. Asa Hutchinson asked for changes in the wake of mounting criticism that a previous bill endorsed discrimination against gays and lesbians.

The House voted 76-17 to pass the new bill, which prohibits state and local government from infringing on someone’s religious beliefs without proving a compelling interest. The legislation now heads to Hutchinson, and his office says he plans to sign it into law.

Demonstrators in favor of a religious freedom bill that Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson wanted rewritten, foreground, gather at the Arkansas state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark., as opponents, left, demonstrate against the bill, on Thursday. A reworked bill was passed and the governor says he’ll sign it. The Associated Press

The measure is similar to a bill sent to the governor earlier this week, but Hutchinson said he wanted it revised to more closely mirror a 1993 federal law. Supporters of the compromise bill say it addresses concerns that the original proposal was discriminatory.

The lawmaker behind the original Arkansas proposal said he backed the changes.

“We’re going to allow a person to believe what they want to believe without the state coming in and burdening that unless they’ve got a good reason to do so,” Republican Rep. Bob Ballinger told the House Judiciary Committee.

Hutchinson was the second governor in as many days to give ground to opponents of the law. Since signing Indiana’s law last week, Pence and his fellow Republicans in the Legislature have been subjected to sharp criticism from around the country. It led Pence to seek changes to address concerns that the law would allow businesses to discriminate based on sexual orientation.

Hutchinson has faced pressure from the state’s largest employers, including retail giant Wal-Mart. Businesses called the bill discriminatory and said it would hurt Arkansas’ image. Hutchinson noted that his own son, Seth, had signed a petition urging him to veto the bill.

Conservative groups said they would still prefer that Hutchinson sign the original bill, but they grudgingly backed the compromise measure.

“The bill that’s on the governor’s desk is the Rolls Royce of religious freedom bills. It is a very good bill,” said Jerry Cox, head of the Arkansas Family Council. “The bill that just passed … is a Cadillac.”

The revised Arkansas measure only addresses actions by the government, not by businesses or individuals, and supporters said that would prevent businesses from using it to deny services to individuals. Opponents said they believed the measure still needs explicit anti-discrimination language similar to Indiana’s proposal.

The original bill “gave us a black eye. This bill ices it,” said Rita Sklar, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas. “We still need some Tylenol.”

As originally passed, neither the Indiana nor Arkansas law specifically mentioned gays and lesbians. But opponents have voiced concern that the language contained in them could offer a legal defense to businesses and other institutions that refuse to serve gays, such as caterers, florists or photographers with religious objections to same-sex marriage.

Similar proposals have been introduced this year in more than a dozen states, patterned after the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, with some differences. Indiana and 19 other states have similar laws on the books.

Davies reported from Indianapolis.

Associated Press writer Allen Reed in Little Rock, Arkansas, contributed to this report.

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