Opinion ID: 427394
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: a repeat trip: the balance in this case

Text: 41 We know now at least the broad contours of the path we must follow in making an accommodation between the City's interest in zoning enforcement and Appellees' free exercise interest. We must first apply the conduct/belief and secular effect and purpose tests. Should the government action pass these tests we then must balance the cost to the government of altering its activity to allow the religious practice to continue unimpeded against the cost to the religious interest imposed by the government action.
42 In this case, the thresholds pass quickly beneath our feet. The City's zoning law affects prayer and religious services, and so involves conduct. Therefore, balancing not absolutism is appropriate. That the law has both secular purpose and effect is noncontroversial. No one contends that zoning laws are based upon disagreement with religious tenets or are aimed at impeding religion. Similarly, given zoning's historical function in protecting public health and welfare, see Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, 416 U.S. 1, 94 S.Ct. 1536, 39 L.Ed.2d 797 (1974), and the incidental nature of the asserted burden on religion, the essential effect of zoning laws is clearly secular.
43 The City of Miami Beach asserts a governmental interest in enforcing its zoning laws so as to preserve the residential quality of its RS-4 zones. By so doing the City protects the zones' inhabitants from problems of traffic, noise and litter, avoids spot zoning, and preserves a coherent land use zoning plan. The Supreme Court has acknowledged the importance of zoning objectives, stating that segregation of residential from nonresidential neighborhoods will increase the safety and security of home life, greatly tend to prevent street accidents, especially to children by reducing traffic and resulting confusion, ... decrease noise ... [and] preserve a more favorable environment in which to raise children. Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365, 394, 47 S.Ct. 114, 120, 71 L.Ed. 303 (1926). See also, Village of Belle Terre v. Boraas, supra, 416 U.S. at 9, 94 S.Ct. at 1541. The City asserts a significant governmental objective in the case at bar. 44 Gatherings for organized religious services produce, as do other substantial gatherings of people, crowds, noise and disturbance. In fact, the parties' stipulations reveal that the City was acting pursuant to neighbors' complaints to end the disturbance caused by Appellees' conduct. Given this total inconsistency between the accomplishment of the City's policy objectives and the continuance of Appellees' conduct, the government action in this case easily passes the least restrictive means test. 45 Doctrine also requires that we consider the impact of a religious based exemption to zoning enforcement. In that regard we find that granting an exception would defeat City zoning policy in all neighborhoods where that exception was asserted. Maintenance of the residential quality of a neighborhood requires zoning law enforcement whenever that quality is threatened. Moreover, no principled way exists to limit an exception's costs just to the harm it would create in this case. Crowds of 500 would be as permissible as crowds of 50. Problems of administering the exception such as distinguishing valid religious claims from feigned ones, therefore, need not even be considered. A religion based exception would clearly and substantially impair the City's policy objectives. Together, the important objectives underlying zoning and the degree of infringement of those objectives caused by allowing the religious conduct to continue place a heavy weight on the government's side of the balancing scale.
46 In calculating the burden on religion, we first determine whether the conduct interfered with constitutes religious practice. The religion of Appellee, Naftali Grosz, requires him to conduct religious services twice daily in the company of at least ten adult males. Solicitation of neighborhood residents to attend and the participation of congregations larger than ten, the conduct on which the City based its notice of violation, are not integral to Appellees' faith. However, the trial judge made no findings, and the record is not clear regarding the extent to which, if any, these objectionable but nonessential practices aid Appellees in gathering ten men and conducting the required services. We assume therefore, that the nonessential practices further the religious conduct. We must also assume, then, that Appellees suffer some degree of burden on their free exercise rights. 47 Turning to the significance of that burden, we note that Miami Beach does not prohibit religious conduct per se. Rather, the City prohibits acts in furtherance of this conduct in certain geographical areas. The relevant question is to what degree does the City's exclusion of Appellees' activities from RS-4 zoned areas burden religious conduct. The City's zoning regulations permit organized, publicly attended religious activities in all zoning districts except the RS-4 single family districts. The zones that allow religious institutions to operate constitute one half of the City's territory. Appellees' home lies within four blocks of such a district. Appellees do not confront the limited choice of ceasing their conduct or incurring criminal liability. Alternatively, they may conduct the required services in suitably zoned areas, either by securing another site away from their current house or by making their home elsewhere in the city. We cannot know the exact impact upon Appellees, in terms of convenience, dollars or aesthetics, that a location change would entail. The burden imposed, though, plainly does not rise to the level of criminal liability, loss of livelihood, or denial of a basic income sustaining public welfare benefit. 9 In comparison to the religious infringements analyzed in previous free exercise cases the burden here stands towards the lower end of the spectrum.
48 In discussing the process for reaching a final balance we noted earlier that courts are frequently forced to undertake an ad hoc balancing when existing free exercise doctrine does not command a specific result. But, such ad hoc balancings need not always be based only on appeals to a court's basic intuitive sense. Fortunately, the instant case arises in a factual context in which substantial, relevant case precedent exists to guide our balancing. This case is not the first to involve balancing government's interest in restricting the location of religious conduct. Prince v. Massachusetts, supra, 321 U.S. at 169, 64 S.Ct. at 443, upheld the convictions of a Jehovah's Witness for violating child labor laws. State law prohibited children from selling anything in the streets. The defendant, the custodian of a nine-year-old girl, asserted the child's free exercise rights to sell religious literature on public streets. The defendant claimed that the child's distribution of literature accorded with religious tenets of the Jehovah's Witness faith. The Supreme Court held the state's interest in children's welfare permitted the state to wholly prohibit children from selling religious literature on the streets. With respect to adults, the Court observed that although the literature distribution could not be altogether banned, it could be regulated within reasonable limits in accommodation to the primary and other incidental uses [of streets]. Id. at 169, 64 S.Ct. at 443. 49 International Society for Krishna Consciousness v. Eaves, 601 F.2d 809 (5th Cir.1979) involved the Society's First Amendment challenge to a municipally owned airport's restrictions on distribution of literature and solicitation of funds. Accepting the Society's claim that religious tenets required followers to solicit funds, this Court nevertheless upheld the airport restrictions. Government may regulate place and manner of religious expression as long as there is no content classification and so long as the regulation is reasonable. Id. at 827. Admittedly, restriction of religious conduct on public streets and in airports is less burdensome than restriction of such conduct on an individual's property. The Prince and the Krishna cases, however, establish the principle that government can exercise its police powers to limit the place and manner of religious conduct, despite a significant burden on free exercise. 50 A decision from the Sixth Circuit, Lakewood Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses v. City of Lakewood, 699 F.2d 303 (1983), gave that principle specific application in a zoning context. In Lakewood, a church congregation challenged a zoning ordinance that prohibited their building a church on a lot they had previously purchased. The Sixth Circuit characterized the infringement on religious freedom as an inconvenient economic burden and a subjective aesthetic burden. The City of Lakewood's interest in creating residential districts to promote its citizens' health and well being was held to outweigh the congregation's religious interests. We think Lakewood's balancing process reached the correct result in a case very similar to this one. The Sixth Circuit faced, if anything, a closer balance than the one called for today--as opposed to the one half of Miami Beach territory where Appellees may conduct their religious services, the City of Lakewood permits church buildings on only around ten percent of its land. 51 We glean a final bit of support for our holding from a Supreme Court dismissal for want of a substantial federal question in Corporation of the Presiding Bishop v. City of Porterville, 338 U.S. 805, 70 S.Ct. 78, (1949). The state court had held that churches may be excluded from residential areas consistently with the free exercise clause. Justice Vinson, writing in a later case, American Communications Ass'n v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382, 397, 70 S.Ct. 674, 94 L.Ed. 925 (1950), explained the Supreme Court's dismissal in the California case. 52 When the effect of a statute or ordinance upon the exercise of First Amendment freedoms is relatively small and the public interest to be protected is substantial, it is obvious that a rigid test requiring a showing of imminent danger to the security of the nation is an absurdity. We recently dismissed for want of substantiality an appeal in which a church group contended that its First Amendment rights were violated by a municipal zoning ordinance preventing the building of churches in certain residential areas.