Making Scapegoats of the Goats

Is ritual animal sacrifice protected by the First Amendment? A recent case centering on this question gives the Supreme Court a new opportunity to re-evaluate its increasingly narrow-minded position on freedom of religion.

In Hialeah, Fla., devotees of the Santeria religion are outraged by a 1987 public ordinance prohibiting animal sacrifice, a practice which is vital to the Santeria rituals. After several years of legal battles in the lower courts, the santerias' case against the city finally reached the Supreme Court last Wednesday.

Santeria is a mixture of Roman Catholic and Yoruba (West African) religious practices. Its main focus is the worship of saints, who are equated with Yoruba deities. As in Catholicism, one prays to these saints to intercede in a crisis. Unlike Catholics, however, the santeros invoke their saints by sacrificing an animal as an offering. Ritual sacrifice also plays a role in priests' ordination rites.

But the city government takes another view of such practices. To them, and to some residents and religious leaders in Hialeah, sacrifice should be banned because it is cruel to animals and may also be a public health hazard. The ordinance was passed following pressure from residents who protested the building of a Santeria church in their neighborhood.

The ordinance exempts the Jewish ritual slaughter techniques practiced by kosher butchers, because kosher slaughter methods are designed to prevent the animals' suffering while Santeria sacrifices are not. The issue of cruelty to animals, say the city officials, distinguishes rites deserving of protection from rites which the city can prohibit.

Although the above facts suggest that the ordinance unfairly targets the Santeria religion, the city claims that the ordinance is a neutral governmental decision not formulated with religion in mind. Richard G. Garrett, the lawyer who will argue the city's case, protests rather disingenuously that both secular and religious animal sacrifices are outlawed by the ordinance.

But what are secular sacrifices? Are they what the American people must make in order to reduce the deficit? The concept is absurd. Sacrifice is a religious practice by definition: One sacrifices animals in order to placate a deity or a spirit, not an IRS auditor. Despite the city's arguments, it seems clear that the issue is freedom of religion.

This being the case, it is to be hoped that the Court will overturn the lower courts' decisions and declare the ordinance unconstitutional. Such a decision would set a valuable precedent by affirming that the religious freedom of even non-mainstream groups was still protected, a principle which the Court has recently been reluctant to affirm. There are several compelling reasons why the ordinance should be considered unconstitutional.

The Court's traditional criterion for judging the relative importance of secular laws and religious rights has been "compelling state interest." For example, the state would have an obvious interest in protecting citizens from a human-sacrifice cult, an interest which would outweigh the group's "freedom of religion" argument.

The only interest that the city of Hialeah might have in regulating Santeria practices is the public health problem caused by disposal of the dead animals. The answer to this, however, is simply to make sure the church complies with the same public health regulations as butchers. Prohibition of all sacrifice is unnecessary.

The city errs most gravely when it judges the relative value and legality of religions based on animal welfare. The idea that animal welfare is sufficient grounds for state interference with constitutional rights is a pernicious idea that privileges animal "rights" over human ones.

Animals do not have rights the way humans do. It is neither legally nor philosophically legitimate to speak of an animal having rights because animals cannot recognize the rights of others, claim their own rights or form governments to protect them. In short, they cannot understand the responsibilities that are inherent in the concept of rights.

It is both absurd and unconstitutional, then, for the city to legislate on their behalf as if they were citizens with a right to government protection. A city that curtails its own citizens' basic rights in order to protect animal "rights" has lost its legitimacy as a government of the people. It's a government of chickens and goats instead.

"Compelling state interest," then, is an excuse the Court should not accept from Hialeah's government. But the Court recently loosened the restraints on governmental interference with religion in Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith (1990), deciding that the state's interest didn't have to be so compelling after all. All the local government has to prove is that the law was a neutral decision not aimed at religion. If it happens to make it impossible for someone to practice his religion, that's just too bad. Clearly, the spectre of "no establishment of religion" has scared judges away from reading the subsequent "nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof" clause.

The Court's begrudging and dismissive attitude towards the importance of religion may prevent the Hialeah ordinance from being overturned. On the other hand, it's fairly obvious that the ordinance had Santeria specifically in mind, so perhaps the Court will recognize that this is a case of discrimination.

It would be ideal, though unlikely, if the ordinance's unconstitutional hostility to religious rights forced the Court to re-examine the implications of the Smith decision. Otherwise, there may be no limit to the frivolous or misguided government objectives which will take priority over Americans' basic religious rights.