Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 24, 1992 TAG: 9203240121
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A3 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: The Baltimore Sun
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
A final decision in that case could test anew a controversial, 5-4 ruling in 1990 allowing government to outlaw some "harmful" forms of religious practice.
The case (Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye vs. City of Hialeah, 91-948) is a challenge by adherents of the Santeria faith to four city ordinances adopted in Hialeah, Fla., in 1987, forbidding animal killing as a ritual, while permitting ritual Kosher slaughter and allowing hunters to kill their prey.
The plaintiffs are believers in the Santeria faith, which traces its origins back to the Bantu people of southern Nigeria. African slaves brought that religion with them to Cuba, where their practice of it was outlawed; Cuban exiles brought it to Florida.
In that faith, chickens, pigeons, doves, ducks, guinea fowl, goats, sheep and turtles are killed in a ritual manner, during the rites of birth, marriage and death, healing rituals, initiation rites for priests and new members and an annual celebration.
The Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye leased an abandoned used-car lot in Hialeah in 1986, and announced plans to open a church. The City Council reacted with four ordinances, adopted in what the church says was "a mob atmosphere" of denunciation of the Santeria faith.
As the case reached the Supreme Court, the church's attorneys urged the justices to spell out more precisely than they had in mind in 1990 when they said governments may pass laws that interfere with the religious practices of particular sects.
In the decision nearly two years ago, the court said that, if government undertakes to outlaw a "harmful" practice when the conduct is forbidden for everyone, there is no constitutional violation even though it disrupts a central practice of a religious group.
To reach that decision, which permitted states to ban the use of peyote by anyone, including Indian worshippers, the court's majority embraced a broad new constitutional theory to interpret the guarantee of free exercise of religion.
Under that theory, legislatures are given much wider authority to regulate conduct that they consider to be harmful, so long as they do not single out a religious ritual and ban that alone.
Memo: shorter version ran in the Metro edition.