Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah

The City did not dispute that Santeria is a religion or that the Church members sincerely performed sacrifices for religious reasons. Animal sacrifice also has a long historical association with worship, including in Jewish, Christian-era historical, and Islamic traditions. The Court emphasized that religious beliefs and practices need not be acceptable, logical, or familiar to others to receive First Amendment protection.

A law fails facial neutrality when it expressly discriminates against religion, but facially secular wording does not end the inquiry. The Free Exercise Clause also forbids covert or masked hostility to religious practice. Courts must examine a law's text, structure, operation, historical background, and the events and statements surrounding its enactment.

Hialeah's enactments were drafted to reach almost exclusively Santeria sacrifice. Their definitions of “sacrifice” and “ritual,” together with exceptions for food slaughter and other secular animal killings, left Santeria's religious practice as the principal conduct prohibited. The ordinances thus operated as a religious gerrymander rather than as evenhanded animal-welfare regulation.

The ordinances also prohibited substantially more religious conduct than necessary to address the City's stated concerns. Health risks from carcass disposal could have been addressed directly through disposal rules, and concerns about animal treatment or methods of killing could have been addressed through generally applicable standards governing animal care and slaughter. A categorical ban on Santeria sacrifice, even in a licensed and inspected slaughterhouse, indicated that suppression of the ritual itself was the true object.

The record independently showed animus toward Santeria. The city acted only after the Church announced its plans, and council members and city officials made statements treating Santeria as sinful, demonic, contrary to the country's values, and unworthy of being practiced in the United States. This history showed that the ordinances were enacted because of their anticipated effect on Santeria worship, not merely despite that effect.

Ordinance 87-72, which restricted slaughter outside properly zoned slaughterhouses, might have appeared more broadly applicable if viewed alone. But it was adopted with the other enactments, in direct response to the Church, and functioned as part of the coordinated scheme to suppress Santeria worship. The Court therefore invalidated it with the rest without deciding whether it could survive if considered separately.

Under Employment Division v. Smith, laws that burden religious practice ordinarily avoid strict scrutiny only if they are both neutral and generally applicable. General applicability prevents government from deciding that its interests are important enough to enforce only against conduct motivated by religious belief.

The ordinances were substantially underinclusive as measures against animal cruelty. They did not generally prohibit animal killing and permitted or tolerated fishing, hunting, pest extermination, euthanasia, and other secular animal killings. The City did not adequately explain why religious sacrifice alone had to bear the burden of its anti-cruelty policy.

The ordinances were likewise underinclusive as public-health measures. The City did not impose comparable controls on hunters, restaurants, or others who could create the same disposal hazards from animal remains. Nor did it consistently require inspection before people consumed meat from hunted animals or animals raised for private use. Its public-health concerns were thus pursued principally when the underlying conduct was religious.

The slaughterhouse-zoning ordinance contained an exemption for certain small commercial slaughter operations, yet the City offered no persuasive explanation for treating Santeria sacrifice more harshly. Across the ordinances, the City advanced its stated interests only against religious conduct, which is precisely the unequal treatment the general-applicability requirement forbids.

A law that is not neutral or not generally applicable must serve interests of the highest order and be narrowly tailored to advance them. Strict scrutiny in this setting is demanding, especially when government has singled out religious conduct for a burden it does not impose on comparable secular activity.

The ordinances failed narrow tailoring because less restrictive measures could directly address the City's asserted concerns. Rules governing sanitation, carcass disposal, animal housing, humane killing methods, inspections, and zoning could target the relevant harms without imposing a flat ban on Santeria sacrifice.

The City's substantial underinclusion also undermined its claim that its interests were compelling in this context. An interest cannot be treated as vital enough to override religious exercise while government permits appreciable comparable harm from secular conduct. Because Hialeah left many analogous secular animal killings and health risks unregulated, it did not establish a compelling justification for these ordinances.