Opinion ID: 1324254
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 8

Heading: Purpose of RFRA

Text: The express purpose of RFRA was to reject the restrictive approach to the Free Exercise Clause that culminated in Smith and to restore the application of strict judicial scrutiny in all cases where free exercise of religion is substantially burdened. 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb(b). The majority's approach is fundamentally at odds with this purpose. As should be clear, RFRA creates a legally protected interest in the exercise of religion. The protected interest in Sherbert was the right to take religious rest on Saturday, not the right to receive unemployment insurance. The protected interest in Yoder was the right to avoid secular indoctrination, not, as the majority contends, the right to avoid criminal punishment. See Maj. Op. at 1070-71 n. 12. Such interests in religious exercise can be severely burdened by government actions that do not deny a benefit or impose a penalty. For example, a court would surely hold that the government had imposed a substantial burden on the exercise of religion if it purchased by eminent domain every Catholic church in the country. Similarly, a court would surely hold that the Forest Service had imposed a substantial burden on the Indians' exercise of religion if it paved over the entirety of the San Francisco Peaks. We have already held that prison officials substantially burden religious exercise if they record the confessions of Catholic inmates, or refuse to provide Halal meat meals to a Muslim prisoner. See Mockaitis v. Harcleroad, 104 F.3d 1522, 1531 (9th Cir.1997) (A substantial burden is imposed on ... free exercise of religion ... by the intrusion into the Sacrament of Penance by officials of the state.); Shakur v. Schriro, 514 F.3d 878, 888-89 (9th Cir.2008) (holding that failure of prison officials to provide Muslim prisoner with Halal or Kosher meat diet could constitute substantial burden on religious exercise under RLUIPA); see also Lovelace v. Lee, 472 F.3d 174, 198-99 (4th Cir.2006) (holding that prisoner's right to religious diet under RLUIPA is clearly established for purposes of qualified immunity). However, the majority's restrictive definition of substantial burden places such injuries entirely outside the coverage of RFRA because they are imposed through different mechanisms than those employed in Sherbert and Yoder. The majority cannot plausibly justify this result by arguing that the complete destruction of a religious shrine or place of worship, violation of a sacrament, or denial of a religious diet are less substantial restrictions on religious exercise than those caused by the denial of unemployment benefits. Rather, the majority refuses to apply strict scrutiny to these substantial injuries because, in its view, a government that presides over a nation with as many religions as the United States of America [could not] function were it required to do so. See Maj. op. at 1064. This proposition was explicitly rejected by RFRA, which directs courts to apply the compelling governmental interest test in all cases where there is a substantial burden on the exercise of religion. See RFRA § 2000bb(a)(5) (stating that the compelling interest test ... is a workable test for striking sensible balances between religious liberty and competing prior governmental interests). It has also been explicitly rejected by the Supreme Court. See Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, 546 U.S. 418, 430, 126 S.Ct. 1211, 163 L.Ed.2d 1017 (2006) (rejecting the government's argument that the Controlled Substances Act cannot function ... if subjected to judicial exemptions because RFRA, and the strict scrutiny test it adopted, contemplate an inquiry more focused than the Government's categorical approach); id. at 1215 (Here the Government's uniformity argument rests not so much on the particular statutory program at issue as on slippery slope concerns that could be invoked in response to any RFRA claim ...). The majority's approach thus places beyond judicial scrutiny many burdens on religious exercise that RFRA was intended to prevent, and does so based on slippery slope arguments that the Supreme Court has instructed us to reject.