Employment Division v. Smith<\/em> (the peyote case). But the Supreme Court blinked and balked and reversed itself, pulling a 180 with a unanimous ruling that the city\u2019s statute was an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment rights of religious minorities.<\/p>\nThe fig-leaf excuse for this reversal was that such discrimination was the transparent intent of Hialeah\u2019s law. That was distinct from the peyote case, the court said, because Oregon\u2019s law hadn\u2019t been specifically intended to burden the free exercise of Native Americans.<\/p>\n
As though the link between peyote and Native Americans is supposedly too obscure to have occurred to anyone. As though the history of the western United States were pristine of any hint of bias toward Native Americans.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s churlish to focus on the flimsiness of the pretext. The good news was that the court reversed itself \u2014 three years of very loud, very public argumentation had rendered its previous position indefensible. That can happen. It happens a lot, actually.<\/p>\n
Later that same year, 1993, Congress passed RFRA \u2014 the Religious Freedom Restoration Act \u2014 a short, specific legislative response to correct the injustice established by Employment Division v. Smith<\/em>.<\/p>\nIn 1993, no one who supported RFRA believed that it said or meant what Justice Alito and the majority of the Supreme Court creatively discovered it to newly mean in the Hobby Lobby ruling. This inelastic law, tailored to remedy a specific ruling \u2014 one the court itself later repudiated (without quite admitting it) in Hialeah<\/em> \u2014 has now been stretched beyond the breaking point.<\/p>\nThis is a law that says, clearly, that the rights of religious minorities cannot be erased by \u201cgenerally applicable laws\u201d that just so happen to make their religious practices illegal. It defends the right of Native American religious groups to use peyote in their religious rituals. It defends the right of Santeria congregations to sacrifice chickens.<\/p>\n
Or, rather, it used to do those things. Now it does the opposite.<\/p>\n
Now, Alito says, RFRA defends the religious liberty of states who seek to outlaw peyote, and it defends the \u201creligious liberty\u201d of nice little Florida cities who just want the religious freedom to not have those weird Santeros hanging around.<\/p>\n
The City of Hialeah should go back to court. Justice Alito has just made it clear that this time they\u2019d win<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"RFRA was a narrowly tailored law that defended the rights of religious minorities — the right of Native religions to use peyote in their rituals, the right of Santeros to sacrifice chickens. But now, thanks to Justice Alito, it means the opposite. Now it means that states have the “religious liberty” to ban the religious use of peyote, and that cities have the “religious liberty” to chase away minority congregations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-23230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-warfare","tag-church-state"],"yoast_head":"\n
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Now it means that states have the "religious liberty" to ban the religious use of peyote, and that cities have the "religious liberty" to chase away minority congregations.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/07\/02\/why-the-perversion-of-religious-liberty-and-rfra-ticks-me-off\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"slacktivist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-07-02T18:32:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/files\/2014\/07\/peyote-300x234.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fred Clark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/07\/02\/why-the-perversion-of-religious-liberty-and-rfra-ticks-me-off\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/07\/02\/why-the-perversion-of-religious-liberty-and-rfra-ticks-me-off\/\",\"name\":\"Why the perversion of 'religious liberty' and RFRA ticks me off\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2014-07-02T18:32:56+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2014-07-02T18:32:56+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/#\/schema\/person\/32666545e535b697afb93d9848dcfc47\"},\"description\":\"RFRA was a narrowly tailored law that defended the rights of religious minorities -- the right of Native religions to use peyote in their rituals, the right of Santeros to sacrifice chickens. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. 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<\/a>The case went all the way to the Supreme Court<\/a>. The majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia in 1990, said \u201cTough luck, Mr. Smith.\u201d<\/p>\n