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THE SUPREME COURT: Animal Sacrifice; Court, Citing Religious Freedom,…

4-5 minutes 7/7/2013

THE SUPREME COURT: Animal Sacrifice; Court, Citing Religious Freedom, Voids a Ban on Animal Sacrifices

The Supreme Court ruled today that a Florida city's ban on ritual animal sacrifice violated the religious freedom of the followers of an Afro-Cuban religion in which the sacrifice of animals plays a central role.

All nine Justices agreed that the prohibition, enacted in 1987 by the City of Hialeah, violated the First Amendment's guarantee of the free exercise of religion. "The principle that government may not enact laws that suppress religious belief or practice is so well understood that few violations are recorded in our opinions," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the Court. [ Excerpts, page 9. ]

But the Justices were divided in their approach to the case, continuing a three-year-old debate within the Court on how to analyze laws that make religious observances burdensome or impossible.

Justice Kennedy's majority opinion found the series of ordinances enacted by the Hialeah City Council to be constitutionally flawed because their goal was to suppress the Santeria religion. The council passed the ordinances in 1987, shortly after a group of Santeria adherents, the Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, announced plans to build a church and community center where religious rites including animal sacrifice would take place.

"The record in this case compels the conclusion that suppression of the central element of the Santeria worship service was the object of the ordinances," Justice Kennedy said. Singling Out a Religion

He said it did not matter that the ordinances did not announce their true intention. Noting that there was no ban on killing animals for other reasons -- for food, including kosher ritual slaughter, or for recreation, as in hunting and fishing -- Justice Kennedy said, "Careful drafting ensured that although Santeria sacrifice is prohibited, killings that are no more necessary or humane in almost all other circumstances are unpunished."

Justice John Paul Stevens joined Justice Kennedy's opinion in full. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist joined it in substantial respects, as did Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Byron R. White.

Three other Justices -- Harry A. Blackmun, Sandra Day O'Connor and David H. Souter -- departed from Justice Kennedy's analysis and offered a broader view of the scope of the guarantee of the free exercise of religion.

In a separate opinion, Justice Blackmun and Justice O'Connor said the Constitution protected religion not only from laws that deliberately place special burdens on religious practice but also from general laws that place burdens on religion as an incidental effect.

These two Justices were both dissenters from a 1990 decision, Employment Division v. Smith, in which the Court refused to exempt members of an American Indian religion that uses peyote in its central ritual from a state law making criminal any use of peyote and other hallucinogenic drugs.

In that decision, written by Justice Scalia, the Court announced the principle to which Justice Kennedy's majority opinion adhered today: laws that happen to make a religious practice difficult or even impossible are constitutional as long as they are "neutral" and of "general applicability."

In their separate opinion today, Justices Blackmun and O'Connor said they still regarded the 1990 decision as incorrect. "The First Amendment's protection of religion extends beyond those rare occasions on which the government explicitly targets religion or a particular religion for disfavored treatment," they said.

Justice Souter, who was not on the Court when it ruled in the peyote case, wrote a 20-page separate opinion criticizing that decision today and calling on his colleagues to reconsider it in the next available case.