Opinion ID: 3031949
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: The “Hybrid-Rights” Doctrine

Text: -9- The plaintiffs contend that the district court erred by not applying strict scrutiny to their free exercise claim under the so-called hybrid-rights doctrine. Yet the plaintiffs offer no reason to depart from our recent decision in Jacobs v. Clark County Sch. Dist., 526 F.3d 419, 440 n.45 (9th Cir. 2008) where we “declin[ed] to be the first” court to allow a “plaintiff to bootstrap a free exercise claim” using the hybrid-rights doctrine. Id. The plaintiffs’ contention that the district court misread Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963) in its discussion of the Free Exercise Clause is irrelevant. The plaintiffs do not and cannot challenge the crux of the district court’s rejection of their free exercise claim—that UC’s policies were more akin to the civil regulation that was upheld in Locke v. Davey, 540 U.S. 712 (2004) than the criminal prohibition that was invalidated in Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993).