Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 27, 1993 TAG: 9303270197
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By GEORGE W. CORNELL ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
To protect that basic right, which they say was undermined by a 1990 Supreme Court decision, they've united behind a bill now before Congress, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
"Never before have so many diverse ideologies come together to support a piece of human rights legislation," says Steven T. McFarland of the Christian Legal Society's Center for Law and Religious Freedom.
The latest, weighty contingent joining the broad effort is the action arm of Roman Catholic Bishops, the U.S. Catholic Conference. It previously declined to back the act, but after clarifications, got behind it last week.
For religious organizations, "this is one of the most important pieces of legislation that we have seen for years," says the Washington public-policy office of the National Council of Churches.
"It affects the interests of every religious body," added the council, which embraces most major Protestant and Eastern Orthodox denominations.
The groups drawn together for the proposed legislation - 58 of them in the Coalition for the Free Exercise of Religion - form one of the most inclusive combinations of religious and rights organizations.
They range from conservative evangelicals such as Southern Baptists and the National Association of Evangelicals to liberal groups such as People for the American Way and American Civil Liberties Union. Also included are national Jewish and Muslim organizations.
"We evangelicals found ourselves taking up arms alongside secular civil liberties groups who were usually shooting at us, not with us," says McFarland, whose Christian legal center is based in Annandale, Va.
In view of the massed support, Richard Land of Nashville, Tenn., head of the Southern Baptist Christian Life Commission, says, "We are confident that the restoration of true religious freedom is now within our grasp."
That rampart was considered shattered by the Supreme Court's 1990 ruling that abandoned a longtime standard that any law restricting religion must serve a "compelling government interest" and be the least means to do it.
Calling that an unaffordable "legal luxury," the court upheld an Oregon law in a case involving peyote use in a traditional Indian ritual of the Native American Church.
Since that ruling, more than 60 cases in lower courts have been decided against religion, generally involving minority groups, says Oliver Thomas, general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee.
"It has made the Constitution's free-exercise clause a dead letter," he said. "Every religion in America has suffered directly or indirectly."
The legislation, scheduled before committees in both houses of Congress with bipartisan support, also has the nod of President Clinton. He said it was "urgently needed to restore full legal protection to the exercise of religion."
After holding back last year, Catholic bishops this time backed the cause after clarifications were added assuring that the law wouldn't be used to advance abortion rights or to deny tax exemptions to religious groups.
The act would reinstate the standard set aside by the high court and demand that government must have "compelling" justification that could not be served in lesser ways before it could legally limit religious practice.
The Supreme Court itself could reinstate the discarded standard in ruling on three pending cases, or it could decide them without direct reference to that longtime guiding principle.
In the three cases, the high court is weighing appeals to overturn lower-court decisions upholding the following governmental actions:
Refusal of the Center Moriches Union Free School District in Suffolk County, N.Y., to allow school facilities to be used in nonschool hours by a Christian group for showing a film on family life.
Various other types of groups are regularly allowed to use school premises in off hours.
Refusal of a public school district in Tucson, Ariz., to provide a sign-language interpreter for a deaf student, James Zobrest, after he shifted to a Catholic high school.
Ordinances in Hialeah, Fla., passed in 1987 after complaints about Santeria religious practices, forbidding slaughter of animals for religious purposes, although such slaughter regularly is allowed for other purposes.
Rituals of the Caribbean-derived Santeria group, called in Hialeah the Church of the Lukumi Babulu Aye, includes sacrifice of animals such as goats, pigs, turtles, chickens and other fowls.
Thomas said most people "don't see beyond the dead chickens and goats to see what's happening in the case" that could threaten all religions.
by CNB