The First Amendment provides that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." In some cases, the right to exercise one's religion conflicts with the government's need to enforce a uniform set of laws to ensure a civilized society. The constitutional standard by which laws that burden free exercise are measured has evolved over the last half-century through U.S. Supreme Court decisions. In Sherbert v. Verner and Wisconsin v. Yoder , the Court considered laws that placed a burden on individuals' free exercise rights under a standard that is often referred to as strict scrutiny. Under strict scrutiny, government actions that burden religious exercise must (1) serve a compelling public interest and (2) use the least restrictive means possible. In Sherbert , the Court held that a state could not deny unemployment compensation benefits to a person who was fired because she refused to work on her Sabbath. The Supreme Court held such a denial would violate the Free Exercise Clause, unless it served a compelling interest. Similarly, in Yoder , the Supreme Court held that compulsory school attendance for Amish students was a violation of their Free Exercise rights due to the Amish belief that attendance beyond the eighth grade would expose children to worldly influences dangerous to their salvation. The Supreme Court stated, "there are areas of conduct protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and thus beyond the power of the State to control, even under regulations of general applicability." In 1990, the Supreme Court significantly altered its interpretation of the Free Exercise clause. In Employment Division v. Smith , the Court abandoned the requirement that laws burdening religious exercise have a compelling governmental interest with respect to neutral statutes. In Smith , two employees claimed their Free Exercise rights were violated when they were fired and denied unemployment compensation after ingesting peyote (a hallucinogenic substance regulated by controlled substances laws) for religious purposes. However, the Supreme Court found the controlled substances law was a general criminal provision, neither aimed at inhibiting religious beliefs nor creating an exception for religious practice. The Court held that a compelling interest analysis was an inappropriate constitutional test for neutral laws of general applicability. Congress responded to the Smith decision by enacting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA; P.L. 103-141 ) of 1993. RFRA statutorily reinstated the strict scrutiny standard in all circumstances where government actions burdened religious exercise. RFRA provided that the government could substantially burden a person's exercise of religion only if the burden (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that interest. As originally enacted, RFRA applied the strict scrutiny standard for governmental action at the federal, state, and local levels. Congress justified applying strict scrutiny to the states as an exercise of power under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which grants "Congress the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article [guaranteeing individuals equal protection and due process of law]." In Ex Parte Virginia , the Supreme Court explained section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment as follows: Whatever legislation is appropriate, that is, adapted to carry out the objects the amendments have in view, whatever tends to enforce submission to the prohibitions they contain, and to secure to all persons the enjoyment of perfect equality of civil rights and the equal protection of the laws against State denial or invasion, if not prohibited, is brought within the domain of congressional power. The Court has described Congress's power under section 5 as a "remedial" power because it extends only to "enforc[ing]" the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. In City of Boerne, Texas v. Flores , the Supreme Court held RFRA unconstitutional as it applied to states and localities because the statute exceeded Congress's remedial powers to enforce rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. In Boerne , the Court considered whether RFRA could exempt a church from local zoning requirements in a historic district. The Supreme Court held that "by enacting RFRA, Congress had exceeded [its remedial authority under section 5] by defining rights instead of simply enforcing them." The Court explained that Congress's powers under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment were limited to the extent that there must be a "congruence and proportionality" between the injury to be remedied and the law adopted to that end. In order to satisfy the Court's "congruence and proportionality" test, Congress must limit the scope of the remedial measure to only those instances where the record clearly demonstrates a pervasive pattern of violations of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court was unable to find a pattern of the use of neutral laws of general applicability to disguise bigotry and animus against religion, and therefore struck down RFRA as an overbroad response to a relatively non-existent problem. In the wake of Boerne , Congress enacted the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA; P.L. 106-274 ). Although similar to RFRA in its restoration of strict scrutiny analysis to free exercise cases, Congress significantly restricted RLUIPA's application in order to conform to the Court's ruling in Boerne . The protections of RLUIPA apply only where states or localities place a substantial burden on religious exercise as a result of a land use regulation, or on the religious exercise of institutionalized persons. The language of RLUIPA broadly defines "religious exercise" as "any exercise of religion, whether or not compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief." RLUIPA's land use provisions (section 2) are triggered only where the substantial burden is imposed in a program that receives federal funding, affects interstate commerce, or occurs as the result of a land use decision involving an individualized assessment. The protections for institutionalized persons (section 3) are triggered only where the institution receives federal funding or the substantial burden affects interstate commerce. Thus, to avoid the broad exercise of power invalidated by Boerne , Congress specifically delineated the narrow application of the RLUIPA protections in order to ground the statute in Congress's powers under the Spending Clause, the Commerce Clause, and the Fourteenth Amendment. Although grounded under different constitutional authority than RFRA, RLUIPA provides the same two-part standard of protection. That is, government actions that impose a substantial burden on religious exercise must (1) serve a compelling government interest and (2) use the least restrictive means to achieve that interest. The party asserting the violation under RLUIPA must prove that the government has placed a substantial burden on religious exercise. The U.S. Supreme Court has interpreted a "substantial burden" as a burden that requires an individual to modify his behavior in violation of his religious beliefs in order to comply with legal requirements. Once a substantial burden is proven, the government must show that the imposition of the burden furthers a compelling governmental interest and is the least restrictive means of furthering that interest. RLUIPA specifically includes the "use, building, or conversion of real property for the purpose of religious exercise" in its definition of religious exercise. In part, Congress enacted RLUIPA to address challenges to zoning ordinances based on religious exercises. Congress recognized that places of assembly are needed to facilitate religious practice, and that zoning regulations may be used to prevent religious groups from using land for such purposes. RLUIPA's legislative history shows that Congress had amassed a record containing numerous instances of targeted discrimination against religious groups evidenced by denial of conditional building permits through discretionary individual assessments and land use regulations. Unlike the institutionalized persons portion of RLUIPA, which only applies when the institution receives federal funding or where the burden affects interstate commerce, the land use portion of RLUIPA also applies wherever the substantial burden is imposed as a result of a land use regulation involving individualized assessments. The repeated denial of a religious group's application for a conditional use permit may violate RLUIPA where the group agrees to, and cooperates with, the zoning boards proposed conditions. In Guru Nanank Sikh Society v. County of Sutter , a Sikh group challenged the Sutter County Planning Commission's decision to deny the group a conditional use permit to build a religious temple. Guru Nanak initially applied for a permit to build the temple on a parcel of land adjacent to a residential area. The county denied this permit citing traffic and noise concerns. Guru Nanak then applied for a permit to build its temple on a much larger, rural parcel of land, consistent with certain conditions laid out by the county. The county again denied the application citing a concern over "leapfrog" development. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that the county's inconsistent treatment of the group's application—first denying the group's application for its proximity to a residential neighborhood, then denying the group's second application for being too far from the city center—had significantly "lessened the prospect of Guru Nanak being able to construct a temple in the future," and therefore imposed a substantial burden on the group's religious exercise. The county presented no argument that it had a compelling interest in denying the building permit and imposing the substantial burden, nor that the restriction was narrowly tailored. RLUIPA also may be violated where the stated reasons for the denial of a religious group's conditional use construction permit are arbitrary and capricious. In Westchester Day School v. Village of Mamaroneck , the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered a town to grant a Jewish private school's application for a conditional use permit to expand its facilities. The court held that the zoning board's consideration of the school's application was characterized by a "blindness to the facts" and was arbitrary and capricious under New York law because the denial bore no relation to public health, safety, or welfare. The court also engaged in a detailed analysis of what constitutes a "substantial burden."