conscience clause

noun

a clause or article in an act or law that exempts persons whose conscientious or religious scruples forbid their compliance.

conscience clause

First recorded in 1865–70

But she interrupts him before he can add his conscience clause.

Subject to a conscience clause, religious instruction was obligatory, and was placed under ecclesiastical inspection.

There was at one time much debating about a so-called "Conscience Clause."

Granted a certain modicum of worldly conformity, they would not be at all indisposed to a conscience clause.'

Secular state education and the “conscience clause” were anathema to him.

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