Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, September 30, 1993                   TAG: 9309300007
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Cox News Service
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

THREAT SEEN TO RELIGIOUS FREEDOM PROFESSORS IN SURVEY DECRY COURT RULINGS

The second annual poll of 21 law professors who specialize in religious freedom issues was conducted by the American Jewish Congress's David V. Kahn Religious Liberty Resource Center.

The poll's release was timed to call attention to religious freedom cases in the Supreme Court term beginning Monday and Senate consideration of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act already passed by the House.

The professors gave the federal courts at all levels a grade of C-minus for rulings on the "free exercise" of religion as guaranteed by the First Amendment. In the 1992 poll, they gave the courts a grade of D in that category.

"The free exercise clause has been eroded by the courts to the point where it is a threatened, if not almost endangered right," said Sylvia Neil, project director for the Report Card on Religious Freedom.

The "free exercise" category was one of five on the religious freedom report card. Other grades were:

C in governments' financial entanglements with religious institutions.

C in promotion of religion.

B-minus on religion in public schools.

B-plus on freedom from explicit discrimination based on religious beliefs.

The report card was created after a 1990 Supreme Court ruling that overturned three decades of precedents requiring the government to show a "compelling reason" why religious groups could not be exempted from requirements that might infringe on their exercise of religion.

In the case - Employment Division vs. Smith - the court said governments can refuse exemptions if their rules were not specifically aimed at a religious group.

The result, Neil said, is that court hearings have been routinely denied in cases that previously would have been heard.

Neil noted that prior to the Smith ruling she represented a Jewish school in Illinois whose students were told they could not participate in interscholastic basketball games wearing yarmulkes - the skullcap worn by some religious Jews - because of a regulation banning head coverings on players.

The school successfully challenged the regulation on the grounds that the athletic association did not have a compelling reason for not granting a religious exception.

Since the Smith ruling, Neil said, the Jewish school would not have been able to challenge the regulation.

In the past year, federal courts have ruled against individuals and religious groups seeking exemptions - on religious grounds - from certain laws or regulations pertaining to autopsies, immigration, taxes and the serving of pork to Muslim prisoners, whose religion forbids them to eat pork.

Although the Supreme Court ruled last term that a Hialeah, Fla., ordinance banning animal sacrifices by a religious group was unconstitutional - a decision applauded by the American Jewish Congress - Neil said the court got low marks because it did not use that case to reverse the Smith decision.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which the Senate is expected to consider this fall, would reverse the court's ruling.