Court Opinion

ID: 9505570
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 20:06:38.34074+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:04:37.261081
License: Public Domain

SHEPARD, Chief Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I join in Justice Dickson's opinion insofar as it remands for an evidentiary hearing on City Chapel's claim that its rights under the Indiana Constitution trump the eminent domain power of the City of South Bend (though whether they actually do so is a question for some future day).
As for City Chapel's claim under the First Amendment, I am satisfied that it does not constitute a "hybrid claim" of the sort envisioned by the brief passage quot*455ed by Justice Dickson from Employment Div. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 881-82, 110 S.Ct. 1595, 108 LEd.2d 876. Largely, I think Judge Walter Stapleton was right when he observed for the Third Circuit that assembling for purposes of worship is a derivative of free exercise of religion and, as a corporate exercise, not entitled to a greater level of First Amendment protection than individual exercise might command. Salvation Army v. Dept. of Community Affairs, 919 F.2d 188, 199 (3rd Cir.1990). I thus conclude that City Chapel loses on its First Amendment claim, though for reasons different from the ones identified by Justices Sullivan and Boehm.