Opinion ID: 780325
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Unambiguous Condition

Text: 11 RLUIPA unequivocally states that it applies to any program or activity that receives Federal financial assistance. 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc-1(b)(1). A spending power statute, as unambiguous in its conditional language as RLUIPA, ensures that the statute's intention to impose a condition is expressed clearly. By its plain language, RLUIPA clearly communicates that any institution receiving federal funds must not substantially burden the exercise of religion absent a showing that the burden is the least restrictive means of serving a compelling government interest. The fact that the least restrictive means standard is perhaps unpredictable because it has resulted in different determinations in different courts does not weaken the express conditional language. In fact, the Supreme Court has held that conditions may be largely indeterminate, so long as the statute provid[es] clear notice to the States that they, by accepting funds under the Act, would indeed be obligated to comply with[the conditions]. Pennhurst State School and Hospital v. Halderman, 451 U.S. 1, 24-25, 101 S.Ct. 1531, 67 L.Ed.2d 694 (1981). Congress is not required to list every factual instance in which a state will fail to comply with a condition. Such specificity would prove too onerous, and perhaps, impossible. Congress must, however, make the existence of the condition itself — in exchange for the receipt of federal funds — explicitly obvious. RLUIPA unambiguously creates this condition.