High Court Overturns Religious Freedom Act

Asserting its own supreme power to say what the Constitution means, the Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down a new federal law that was designed to expand and protect the freedom of religion.

By a 6-3 vote, the court said Congress exceeded its power, intruded on the authority of local officials and overreacted to a popular pressure group when it enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

That law, passed with little debate and no dispute, said government officials at all levels must bend their rules and make special exemptions for persons whose actions are based on their religion.

These claims have ranged widely. They include the church congregation that seeks to rebuild its cathedral in a city’s historic preservation zone, the Amish family that does not want to put bright safety markings on its horse-drawn buggy, the Muslim inmate who wants to pray during a prison work detail and a Christian landlady in Chico, Calif., who refuses to rent to unmarried couples.

In 1990, the high court looked at such claims and decided to narrow its interpretation of the 1st Amendment’s “free exercise of religion.”

Religious adherents such as these should receive the same, but no better, treatment as everyone else, the court ruled in Oregon vs. Smith.

In that case, the justices rejected a claim from two Native Americans who sued after they were fired from their jobs as Oregon drug counselors for using peyote, an illegal drug. The fired workers said their religion gave them a right to chew the hallucinogen.

Disagreeing, the court said local and state laws that are “neutral and generally applicable” should prevail over special claims based on religion, so long as officials do not act out of hostility toward religion.

With the 1993 law, Congress acted to overturn that decision and to restore the court’s previous ruling, which required special treatment for religious claimants. The 1st Amendment demands giving unique deference to claims based on religious faith, lawmakers said.

Soon after taking office, President Clinton signed the measure in an elaborate White House ceremony featuring Sikhs, Muslims, Native Americans and others representing the nation’s minority faiths.

But the high court struck back Wednesday and nullified the law.

“The power to interpret the Constitution,” said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, “remains with the judiciary.”

Nowhere in the Constitution does Congress have the general power to tell local and state officials how to govern, Kennedy said. Congress cannot simply announce its interpretation of the 1st Amendment and demand that state and local governments follow it, he said.

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While the opinion sets out a major statement on the separation of powers, Kennedy downplayed its significance for religion in America.

He noted that members of Congress could not cite recent examples of “religious bigotry” or “deliberate persecution” of believers during their hearings on the bill.

No one disputes that the government cannot infringe on the freedom to worship, and that believers cannot be told to alter or abandon their faith. That freedom to believe and worship is the essence of the “free exercise of religion,” the court said.

The coalition of religious groups that pushed for the 1993 law had cited examples of Hmong immigrants complaining when dead relatives were given autopsies in violation of their religious views. Others cited how churches and synagogues were forbidden from expanding in historic zones.

The test case that came before the court, City of Boerne vs. Flores, 95-2074, is one such example.

St. Peter’s Catholic Church, in a Texas town near San Antonio, had moved to rebuild its small stone cathedral, erected in 1923. It was blocked, however, by city officials on the basis of the town’s historic preservation law.

Citing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the church sued and won a preliminary ruling from the U.S. appeals court in New Orleans. But the Supreme Court threw out that ruling Wednesday and sent the case back to Texas to have the church and the city work out their differences.

Kennedy said neither this local dispute nor the other “incidental burdens” on religion cited by Congress suggest that religious liberty in America is in danger.

“It is difficult to maintain that [such] examples are due to animus or hostility to the burdened religious practices or that they indicate some widespread pattern of religious discrimination in this country,” he said.

Religious-rights advocates were quick to disagree.

The ruling “is a huge blow to religious liberty,” said the American Jewish Congress. Mark Chopko, general counsel of the U.S. Catholic Conference, said the decision “has once again made religion vulnerable to the whim of government.”

A coalition of groups--including, on the left, People for the American Way and the American Civil Liberties Union and, on the right, the Christian Legal Society and Concerned Women for America--had joined to lobby for the 1993 law.

The groups’ leaders said they were surprised and disappointed by the court’s willingness to knock the law down.

“The ‘least dangerous branch’ of government has turned out to be the most dangerous for those who value religious freedom,” said J. Brent Walker of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs.

However, 16 states had urged the court to strike down the law. They said it was being used by prisoners to make outlandish claims supposedly based on religion.

While the outcome will dismay many religious-rights advocates, the court’s opinion should prove fascinating to constitutional scholars and legal historians.

Through 64 pages in all, the justices debated among themselves the meaning of two key provisions of the Constitution, cited the debates during the Reconstruction Congress in 1866, exchanged lengthy citations from the letters of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and examined the state constitutions that preceded the U.S. Constitution.

The 1st Amendment says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Most religion cases in the courts concern the first provision. For example, an official prayer in a public school was deemed to violate the ban on an “establishment of religion.”

Relatively few cases have interpreted the “free exercise” clause. In 1963, the liberal court led by Chief Justice Earl Warren said a state violated this provision when it denied unemployment benefits to a Seventh-day Adventist who refused to work on Saturdays.

That decision, in Sherbert vs. Verner, set the test for religious-freedom cases until it was overturned in the 1990 peyote case.

Wednesday’s outcome also turned on the 14th Amendment. Ratified after the Civil War, it says no state shall “deprive any person . . . of liberty without due process of law.” It also says “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

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In passing the 1993 law, Congress cited this provision and said it was enforcing its view of the “liberty” guaranteed in the 14th Amendment.

While everyone agrees Congress cannot restrict the individual liberty set forth in the Constitution, can it expand that liberty by law?

The court answered “no” on Wednesday.

Kennedy’s opinion was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

In a dissent that she read from the bench, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said the court’s 1990 peyote case, in which it ruled that religion does not merit special treatment, was “wrongly decided, . . . was not faithful to the 1st Amendment,” and should be overruled. She was joined by Justices David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer.