Today in Supreme Court History: June 11, 1993

6/11/1993: Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah decided.

Comments

[JoeFromtheBronx]

This is the Santeria case, where the Supreme Court held that a local law was not truly a generally applicable law and thus was a violation of the Free Exercise Clause.

Justice Blackmun, listening to a suggestion by his law clerk Sherry Colb [who later became a law professor with an interest in animal rights], in a concurring opinion noted a neutral animal rights regulation would be a different matter.

The oral argument (see Oyez.com) suggests the government did have some reasonable concerns. The ultimate problem is that is not enough if you handle things wrongly.

[bye]

Lakumi Babalu was effectively settled in 1879, the Reynolds case

"Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship, would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice? Or if a wife religiously believed it was her duty to burn herself upon the funeral pile of her dead husband, would it be beyond the power of the civil government to prevent her carrying her belief into practice?

So here, as a law of the organization of society under the exclusive dominion of the United States, it is provided that plural marriages shall not be allowed. Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances. . . ."