The court's decisions simultaneously pleased and infuriated America's religious leaders. The ruling was sparked by a dispute between St. Peter's Catholic Church and the small Texas town of Boerne. Boerne's historical commission refused to let it do so. The Court said that laws that are neutral toward religion can be valid even if they infringe on some people's religious beliefs. The case prompted the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Council of Churches, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, Jewish groups and even the ACLU in a rare moment of unity to call for RFRA to prevent infringement of religious freedom.
Every religion is in the minority somewhere.
Baptists are a minority in Utah, and Mormons in Mississippi. Catholic teaching hospitals can lose accreditation for refusing to do abortions. However, the Supreme Court saw no widespread pattern of religious discrimination that justified Congressional action like laws Congress passed to protect black civil rights in the '60s. And it saw Congress infringing on the Court's role to protect religious freedom. In the earlier case, Aguilar v. Felton, the Court argued that the law promoted an'excessive entanglement of church and state' by permitting public school teachers to work in religious schools.