Is Animal Sacrifice Legal In The Us

THE SUPREME COURT: Animal Sacrifice; Court, Citing Religious Freedom, Voids a Ban on Animal Sacrifices

June 12, 1993

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June 12, 1993

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The Supreme Court ruled today that a Florida city'southward ban on ritual animal sacrifice violated the religious freedom of the followers of an Afro-Cuban organized religion in which the cede of animals plays a central role.

All nine Justices agreed that the prohibition, enacted in 1987 by the City of Hialeah, violated the Commencement Subpoena's guarantee of the gratuitous do of religion. "The principle that government may not enact laws that suppress religious belief or do is and so well understood that few violations are recorded in our opinions," Justice Anthony Thousand. Kennedy wrote for the Court. [ Excerpts, page 9. ]

But the Justices were divided in their approach to the case, continuing a three-year-old debate inside the Courtroom on how to analyze laws that make religious observances burdensome or impossible.

Justice Kennedy's bulk opinion found the serial of ordinances enacted by the Hialeah City Council to be constitutionally flawed because their goal was to suppress the Santeria religion. The council passed the ordinances in 1987, before long afterward a group of Santeria adherents, the Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, announced plans to build a church and community center where religious rites including animal sacrifice would have place.

"The tape in this case compels the conclusion that suppression of the fundamental element of the Santeria worship service was the object of the ordinances," Justice Kennedy said. Singling Out a Religion

He said it did not matter that the ordinances did not announce their true intention. Noting that there was no ban on killing animals for other reasons -- for food, including kosher ritual slaughter, or for recreation, equally in hunting and fishing -- Justice Kennedy said, "Careful drafting ensured that although Santeria sacrifice is prohibited, killings that are no more necessary or humane in near all other circumstances are unpunished."

Justice John Paul Stevens joined Justice Kennedy'due south opinion in full. Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist joined information technology in substantial respects, as did Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Byron R. White.

Iii other Justices -- Harry A. Blackmun, Sandra Day O'Connor and David H. Souter -- departed from Justice Kennedy's analysis and offered a broader view of the scope of the guarantee of the free exercise of religion.

In a separate stance, Justice Blackmun and Justice O'Connor said the Constitution protected faith not but from laws that deliberately identify special burdens on religious practice but also from general laws that place burdens on religion as an incidental outcome.

These two Justices were both dissenters from a 1990 decision, Employment Sectionalization v. Smith, in which the Courtroom refused to exempt members of an American Indian faith that uses peyote in its central ritual from a state constabulary making criminal any employ of peyote and other hallucinogenic drugs.

In that decision, written past Justice Scalia, the Courtroom announced the principle to which Justice Kennedy's majority opinion adhered today: laws that happen to make a religious practice hard or even impossible are constitutional as long as they are "neutral" and of "general applicability."

In their separate opinion today, Justices Blackmun and O'Connor said they still regarded the 1990 determination every bit incorrect. "The First Amendment's protection of organized religion extends beyond those rare occasions on which the government explicitly targets religion or a particular religion for disfavored treatment," they said.

Justice Souter, who was not on the Court when it ruled in the peyote case, wrote a 20-folio separate opinion criticizing that decision today and calling on his colleagues to reconsider it in the next available case.

The Courtroom's ruling in the peyote case provoked an uproar amid many religious and civil liberties groups, and a bill to overturn it is advancing in Congress. The bill, named the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, was passed by the Firm of Representatives on May 11 and has non yet come up to a vote in the Senate.

The split up opinions today answered the question of why the Court had taken and so long to decide the Hialeah instance. The example, argued on Nov. four of last year, was the oldest undecided case on the Courtroom's agenda. A Religious Hybrid

Santeria (pronounced sahnt-ah-REE-ya) is practiced today by some 70,000 Cubans living in South Florida, and experts put the number nationwide at many thousands, with concentrations in New York, Chicago and other cities with large Caribbean Hispanic populations. It is a blend of religions, mixing the traditional Yoruba religion, brought to Cuba past Africans who came there every bit slaves, with the Roman Catholic faith they constitute in that location.

In the process, the identities of Yoruban gods became fused with the identities of Catholic saints; Santeria ways "the way of the saints." Adherents participate in Catholic sacraments, but they too kill animals, including chickens, pigeons, goats, sheep and turtles, as religious sacrifices to appeal to their deities.

Usually, the animals are eaten as role of the ritual, but in some rituals the carcasses are discarded. The city defended its ban on sacrifices in role as a public health measure, simply Justice Kennedy said today that Hialeah "could have imposed a general regulation on the disposal of organic garbage" if that was its actual concern.

The master ordinance defined sacrifice as "to unnecessarily kill, torment, torture, or mutilate an fauna in a public or individual ritual or ceremony not for the main purpose of food consumption." The Santeria church'southward ramble claiming to the ordinance was rejected past both the Federal District Court in Miami and the U.s. Court of Appeals for the 11th Excursion, in Atlanta.

Douglas Laycock, a police professor at the University of Texas who represented the church in its Supreme Court appeal, said today that the decision, while a victory for his clients, "only picks upward the well-nigh obvious cases of suppression" and could let "more clever city councils" to typhoon laws on other subjects that would exist harmful to religious practice while staying within the boundaries the Court has established.

Simply Ernesto Pichardo, the founder of the Hialeah church, reacted jubilantly. "The Court'due south conclusion is of profound significance," he said today at a news conference at his home in Dade County. "Animal cede is an integral part of our faith. It is like our holy repast. The decision ways that our people will no longer feel they are outlaws because of the way they worship God."

It is unclear how the decision will bear on the practise of Santeria in the New York area. Unlike the Hialeah ordinance, the New York land and city laws governing cruelty to animals and the keeping of livestock do not mention religion or ritual, said Herman Cohen, the main law enforcement officer with the American Order for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Only he added that the police force disallowment the torture of animals might be called into question.

"Until today, taking an fauna into a living room, cutting its pharynx and saying a prayer was prohibited," Mr. Cohen said. "I don't know if that's true anymore."

Briefs in support of the Santeria church were filed by several mainstream religious groups, including the American Jewish Congress and the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/12/us/supreme-court-animal-sacrifice-court-citing-religious-freedom-voids-ban-animal.html

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