Opinion ID: 2558362
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Individualized Assessment

Text: Notwithstanding my view that the judge's rulings on Petitioner's motions to postpone the trial constitute a judicial analog to a neutral and generally-applicable legislative act, I must undertake another inquiry, namely, whether the judge's determination constitutes an individualized assessment, sufficient to trigger a Sherbert analysis. See Kissinger v. Bd. of Trustees of Ohio State Univ., 5 F.3d 177, 179 (6th Cir.1993) (employing a three-part analysis: whether the governmental action was generally applicable, was not aimed at particular religious practices, and did not contain a system of particularized exemptions). But see First Covenant Church v. City of Seattle, 120 Wash.2d 203, 840 P.2d 174, 181 (1992) (appearing to conflate the individual assessment analysis with the neutral/generally-applicable analysis). Smith said, vis-á-vis individualized exemptions/assessments, that: The Sherbert test, it must be recalled, was developed in a context that lent itself to individualized governmental assessment of the reasons for the relevant conduct. As a plurality of the Court noted in [ Bowen v. ] Roy [476 U.S. 693, 106 S.Ct. 2147, 90 L.Ed.2d 735 (1986)], a distinctive feature of the unemployment compensation programs is that their eligibility criteria invite consideration of the particular circumstances behind an applicant's unemployment: The statutory conditions . . . provided that a person was not eligible for unemployment compensation benefits if, without good cause, he had quit work or refused available work. The good cause standard created a mechanism for individualized exemptions. As the plurality pointed out in Roy, our decisions in the unemployment cases stand for the proposition that where the State has in place a system of individual exemptions, it may not refuse to extend that system to cases of religious hardship without compelling reason. Smith, 494 U.S. at 884, 110 S.Ct. at 1603, 108 L.Ed.2d at 884 (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). To be sure, and as mentioned supra, because trial courts deal with discrete controversies between the parties before them, each ruling or determination in the case is somewhat individualized. The rub, though, is whether a judicial ruling is cut from the same cloth as the individualized exemptions with which the Supreme Court in Sherbert and its progeny dealt. In formulating an answer to this question, I proceed along the following path: The determination of whether the Sherbert exception [ i.e. application of Sherbert ] is triggered proceeds in two steps. The first focuses on whether a law contains a mechanism similar to the good cause criterion that is open to unfettered discretionary interpretation. If such a mechanism exists, the second step requires courts to determine whether it is enforced in a discriminatory manner. Absent evidence of discrimination in the actual enforcement of the [governmental action], . . . Sherbert . . . is not triggered, and there is no need to apply the compelling state interest test. Carol M. Kaplan, The Devil Is in the Details: Neutral, Generally Applicable Laws and Exceptions from Smith, 75 N.Y.U. L.REV. 1045, 1081 (2000). First, although there is no requirement in civil cases in the posture of the present case that a judge find expressly good cause before granting a motion to postpone a trial, [6] a trial court's decision to grant or deny a motion to postpone or continue a trial is within the sound discretion of the trial court, and, accordingly, the decision is subject to a great degree of deference on appellate review. See Schroder v. State, 206 Md. 261, 265, 111 A.2d 587, 589 (1955) (It has long been a well settled rule in this State that the granting or refusing of a continuance is within the sound discretion of the trial court and will not be set aside on appeal unless the exercise of that discretion has been arbitrary.). Although the abuse of discretion standard does not leave judges with unfettered discretionary interpretation, appellate review of this type of judicial determination is highly deferential and gives judges a substantial degree of discretion in granting such motions. Whether the abuse of discretion standard of review that insulates, to a degree, a trial court's decision to grant or deny a motion to postpone or continue a trial is akin to the good cause standard with which Sherbert and the other unemployment compensation cases deal, absent from the record here is any evidence that this ruling specifically, rulings from this particular judge, or rulings from this particular court, were in any way discriminatory. Absent such evidence, I conclude Sherbert to be inapposite and inapplicable to the present factual situation. [7] One final observation on this point is in order. I do not believe that the legislative ills that strict scrutiny protects against in the Free Exercise sphere are applicable with equal force to the judicial branch. See GORDON S. WOOD, THE CREATION OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 1776-1787 609 (1969) (concluding that separation of powers was intended to ensure the protection of individual rights against all governmental encroachments, particularly by the legislature, the body which Whigs ha[d] traditionally cherished as the people's exclusive repository of their public liberty) (emphasis added). That is, a concern of any democratic society is that an oppressive or tyrannical electorate will emerge and elect similarly minded legislative representatives, who, in turn, will enact laws that will oppress certain disfavored groups. See Riley v. St. Luke's Episcopal Hosp., 196 F.3d 514 (5th Cir. 1999) (Stewart, J., dissenting), rev'd, 252 F.3d 749 (5th Cir.2001) (The branch thought to constitute the greatest danger . . . was the legislative; during the operation of the Articles of Confederation, the legislature, in the view of many of the Framers, intruded impermissibly into the sphere of liberty and private property.). To protect against laws whose object is to restrict religious practice, strict scrutiny in the Free Exercise realm acts as a judicial check against this legislative possibility, placing the burden on the government to prove that the legislative enactment is tailored narrowly to further a compelling governmental interest. If the government fails to shoulder this burden with respect to laws that place a substantial burden on one's Free Exercise rights, it is the courts' duty to invalidate such a law or action. The judiciary, then, [i]n our system of checks and balances . . . by its very nature, is and is supposed to be the anti-democratic branch. Porter v. State, 47 Md.App. 96, 109, 421 A.2d 985, 992 (1980) (Moylan, J., concurring). Or, stated differently, the judiciary was envisioned as the branch of government that would curb a legislature's attempts to oppress the minority (or, in this case, oppress one's religious beliefs and/or practices), and not the branch that, itself, would engage in the oppressing. The possibility of a tyranny of the majority in legislative enactmentsperhaps best exemplified in Hialeah does not exist to the same degree in isolated judicial rulings or determinations. Of course, it is possible for a judge to decide the outcome of a case or of a motion based on religious animus; strict scrutiny, however, does not apply inevitably to all judicial determinations invoking the word religion. The abuse of discretion standard provides adequately a proper check against such a possibility.