Opinion ID: 6353575
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Definition of a “Substantial Burden”

Text: The parties contest what constitutes a substantial burden under RFRA but fortunately, we do not write on a clean slate. This Court previously addressed this same question in Navajo Nation v. United States Forest Service, 535 F.3d 1058 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc). In Navajo Nation, our en banc court faced facts that mirror those here. Plaintiffs in Navajo Nation, several American Indian tribes and individuals, sued the U.S. Forest Service to enjoin the Service from allowing a ski resort operating on government land to use recycled wastewater to make artificial snow for skiing. See id. at 1063. Like Oak Flat, the site of the ski resort (a mountain named Humphrey’s Peak) was “sacred in [the American Indians’] religion” and was a site for religious ceremonies. Id. Like the Land Exchange, the Forest Service’s plan in Navajo Nation to permit the ski resort to use recycled wastewater on Humphrey’s Peak would indisputably “spiritually contaminate” a sacred area and inhibit religious ceremonies. Id. And like Apache Stronghold, the Navajo Nation plaintiffs claimed that the challenged government action would violate RFRA. See id. Just as the facts in Navajo Nation parallel the facts here, so do the legal issues. On appeal in Navajo Nation was whether Forest Service’s proposed plan would create a “substantial burden” under RFRA. Id. at 1067. To determine the definition of a “substantial burden” under RFRA, Navajo Nation turned to RFRA’s text. RFRA’s stated statutory purpose is to “restore the compelling interest test as set forth in [two landmark Free Exercise Clause cases,] Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 APACHE STRONGHOLD V. UNITED STATES 19 (1963) and Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972) and to guarantee [that test’s] application in all cases where free exercise of religion is substantially burdened.” 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb(b)(1). (This “compelling interest test” is what we typically call strict scrutiny, and it requires that any substantial burden on religion both be “in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and be “the least restrictive means of furthering that . . . interest.” Id. § 2000bb-1(a), (b).) But Sherbert and Yoder did not only “set forth the compelling interest test.” Navajo Nation, 535 F.3d at 1069. These two cases also “define[d] what kind or level of burden on the exercise of religion is sufficient to invoke” that test— in other words, what burden counts as a “substantial burden.” Id. So, because RFRA expressly “restore[d]” Sherbert and Yoder’s compelling interest test, 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb(b)(1), we concluded that Sherbert and Yoder must “also control [RFRA’s] ‘substantial burden’ inquiry,” the step that determines whether the compelling interest test applies to government action in the first place, Navajo Nation, 535 F.3d at 1069. Accordingly, to define a “substantial burden” under RFRA, Navajo Nation looked to the type of burden on religion that was imposed in Sherbert and in Yoder. In Sherbert, the Supreme Court held that denying government benefits on account of religion imposes a substantial burden on religion. See 374 U.S. at 410. South Carolina thus violated the Free Exercise Clause by withholding unemployment benefits from a worker who was fired because she refused to work on her faith’s day of rest. See id. In Yoder, the Supreme Court held that imposing a government penalty on account of religion also imposes a substantial burden. See 406 U.S. at 213, 234. Wisconsin 20 APACHE STRONGHOLD V. UNITED STATES thus violated the Free Exercise Clause by fining Amish parents for violating a state truancy law that required children to attend school until age sixteen, even though sending children to high school was “contrary to the Amish religion.” Id. at 208. So under RFRA, the government imposes a substantial burden on religion only when the government action fits within the framework established by Sherbert and Yoder: “when individuals are forced to choose between following the tenets of their religion and receiving a governmental benefit,” as in Sherbert, or when individuals are “coerced to act contrary to their religious beliefs by the threat of civil or criminal sanctions,” as in Yoder. Navajo Nation, 535 F.3d at 1070. A second textual clue also supports our holding in Navajo Nation. RFRA explicitly defined numerous terms but not the phrase “substantial burden.” See 40 U.S.C. § 2000bb-2. This omission has a simple explanation: “substantial burden” already had a well-established definition in the religious liberty context. The phrase “substantial burden” is “a term of art . . . previously used in numerous Supreme Court cases in applying the Free Exercise Clause.” Navajo Nation, 535 F.3d at 1074–75; see also Hernandez v. Comm’r, 490 U.S. 680, 699 (1989) (“The free exercise inquiry asks whether government has placed a substantial burden on the observation of a central religious belief or practice and, if so, whether a compelling governmental interest justifies the burden.” (citing Yoder, 406 U.S. at 220–21)); Smith, 494 U.S. at 883 (“Under the Sherbert test, governmental actions that substantially burden a religious practice must be justified by a compelling governmental interest.”). How did the Supreme Court define this “substantial burden” term of art? By reference to the Sherbert/Yoder APACHE STRONGHOLD V. UNITED STATES 21 framework. In Jimmy Swaggart Ministries v. Bd. of Equalization of California, for instance, the Supreme Court held that a generally applicable tax “impose[d] no constitutionally significant burden on [the] appellant’s religious practices or beliefs” because “in no sense has the State ‘conditioned receipt of an important benefit upon conduct proscribed by a religious faith, or . . . denied such a benefit because of conduct mandated by religious belief.’” 493 U.S. 378, 391–92 (1990) (quoting Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Comm’n of Florida, 480 U.S. 136, 141 (1987))). Other Free Exercise cases echoed this understanding of when the Free Exercise Clause applies—in other words, this understanding of when the government has created a substantial burden. 7 See, e.g., Thomas v. Rev. Bd. of Indiana Emp. Sec. Div., 450 U.S. 707, 717–18 (1981) (“Where the state conditions receipt of an important benefit upon conduct proscribed by a religious faith, or where it denies such a benefit because of conduct mandated by religious belief . . . a burden upon religion exists. While the compulsion may be indirect, the infringement upon free exercise is nonetheless substantial.”). With this background in mind, Navajo Nation’s conclusion about the meaning of “substantial burden” is even stronger. Where, as here, a statute does not expressly define a term of settled meaning, courts “must infer . . . that Congress means to incorporate the established meaning of that term.” NLRB v. Town & Country Elec., Inc., 516 U.S. 85, 94 (1995) (quoting Nationwide Mut. Ins. Co. v. Darden, 503 U.S. 318, 322 (1992)). Guided by this mandate, Navajo Nation recognized that the Supreme Court’s settled definition of a “substantial 7 While some of these cases refer to “conditioning receipt” of a benefit and “den[ying]” a benefit, e.g. Thomas, 450 U.S. at 717, rather than conditioning the receipt of a benefit or imposing a penalty, see Navajo Nation, 535 F.3d at 1070, denying a benefit and imposing a penalty are two sides of the same coin. 22 APACHE STRONGHOLD V. UNITED STATES burden” in the Free Exercise context—a burden within the Sherbert/Yoder framework—governs that same phrase’s meaning under RFRA. Navajo Nation drew further support from Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association, 485 U.S. 439 (1988) and Bowen v. Roy, 476 U.S. 693 (1986), two Free Exercise Clause cases that asked and answered essentially the same question that we ask here: what constitutes a “substantial burden” on religion? In Lyng, a group of American Indians challenged a federal plan to build a road over, and permit logging on, land those American Indians held sacred. See 485 U.S. at 441–42. The challengers claimed that the planned construction would “physically destroy the environmental conditions and the privacy without which the [American Indian] religious practices [could not] be conducted.” Id. at 449. In Bowen, the petitioners challenged a federal statute that required state agencies to use social security numbers to identify welfare benefit recipients; according to the challengers’ American Indian religion, assigning a numerical identifier to their daughter would rob her of “spiritual power.” See 476 U.S. at 695–96. But the petitioners in neither Lyng nor Bowen had stated a valid Free Exercise claim because in “neither case . . . would the affected individuals be coerced by the Government’s action into violating their religious beliefs; nor would either governmental action penalize religious activity by denying any person an equal share of the rights, benefits, and privileges enjoyed by other citizens.” Lyng, 485 U.S. at 449; see Bowen, 476 U.S. at 700. This was true, the Supreme Court held, even if the government’s action in Lyng would “virtually destroy the . . . Indians’ ability to practice their religion.” 485 U.S. at 451. Lyng and Bowen thus confirmed that a “substantial burden” in the Free Exercise context consists only of those government actions APACHE STRONGHOLD V. UNITED STATES 23 that fall within the Sherbert/Yoder framework—actions that impose a penalty or deny a benefit—no matter how otherwise burdensome the government might be. 8 The same must be true for substantial burdens under RFRA, given that “Sherbert, Yoder, and federal court rulings prior to Smith”— that is, rulings like Lyng and Bowen—“control [RFRA’s] ‘substantial burden’ inquiry.” Navajo Nation, 535 F.3d at 1069. To summarize, Navajo Nation held that a “substantial burden” under RFRA consists only of burdens within the Sherbert/Yoder framework for three reasons. First, RFRA by its text “restored” Sherbert, Yoder, their “compelling interest” test, and their “substantial burden” inquiry, thus defining a “substantial burden” under RFRA as either of the burdens present in those two cases. Second, the Supreme Court has long used the phrase “substantial burden” as a Free Exercise Clause term of art that meant only the two burdens within the Sherbert/Yoder framework, and a “substantial burden” under RFRA must hold that same, settled meaning. And third, Lyng and Bowen, the cases most factually and legally analogous to Navajo Nation (and for that matter, to this case) confirmed that even burdensome government action does not constitute a “substantial burden” (and thus does not trigger the “compelling interest” test) if that action falls outside the Sherbert/Yoder framework. 8 Admittedly, Lyng’s terminology was imprecise. It did not use the phrase “substantial burden” but instead used different words for the same idea: the proposed road through the American Indian sacred site did not impose a “burden on [the American Indians’] religious practices [] heavy enough to violate the Free Exercise Clause,” or even heavy enough to “require [the] government to bring forward a compelling justification” for its plan. 485 U.S. at 447, 450. 24 APACHE STRONGHOLD V. UNITED STATES Applying Navajo Nation’s “substantial burden” standard to that case’s facts, we held that under RFRA the Navajo suffered no “substantial burden” on their religion and thus had no RFRA claim against the Forest Service. See id. at 1070. To the Navajo, the Forest Service’s decision to permit wastewater on Humphrey’s Peak would “spiritually desecrate a sacred mountain.” Id. But that government decision lay outside the Sherbert/Yoder framework to which RFRA applies. The Forest Service did not “coerce the [Navajo] to act contrary to their religion” by imposing a penalty or denying a governmentally granted benefit when it authorized the ski resort to use wastewater on the peaks. Id. The Service thus imposed no substantial burden under RFRA. See id. This was so, we held, “[e]ven were we to assume . . . that the government action in this case will ‘virtually destroy the . . . [Navajo’s] ability to practice their religion.’” Id. at 1072 (quoting Lyng, 485 U.S. at 451). Where there is no substantial burden, there is no ground to apply the “compelling interest” test, and thus no RFRA violation—no matter how dire the practical consequences of a government policy or decision. Any other result would be inconsistent with RFRA’s text and with the Supreme Court’s understanding of what constitutes a substantial burden on religious exercise. While Navajo Nation’s “substantial burden” holding has firm doctrinal roots, we noted further that our holding there also has a strong practical basis. Were the scope of a substantial burden under RFRA broader than the Sherbert/Yoder framework, “any action the federal government were to take, including action on its own land, would be subject to the personalized oversight of millions of citizens.” Id. at 1063. And in the specific factual context of Navajo Nation—federal land use decisions—“giving one religious sect a veto over the use of public park land would APACHE STRONGHOLD V. UNITED STATES 25 deprive others of the right to use what is, by definition, land that belongs to everyone.” Id. at 1063–64.