Court Opinion

ID: 9431243
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:31:46.60163+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:16:48.254719
License: Public Domain

Justice Brennan,
with whom
Justice Marshall and Justice Blackmun join, dissenting.
“‘[T]he Free Exercise Clause,”’ the Court explains today, “ ‘is written in terms of what the government cannot do to the individual, not in terms of what the individual can exact from the government.’ ” Ante, at 451 (quoting Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398, 412 (1963) (Douglas, J., concurring)). Pledging fidelity to this unremarkable constitutional principle, the Court nevertheless concludes that even where the Government uses federal land in a manner that threatens the very existence of a Native American religion, the Government is simply not “doing” anything to the practitioners of that faith. Instead, the Court believes that Native Americans who request that the Government refrain from destroying their religion effectively seek to exact from the Government de facto beneficial ownership of federal property. These two astonishing conclusions follow naturally from the Court’s deter*459mination that federal land-use decisions that render the practice of a given religion impossible do not burden that religion in a manner cognizable under the Free Exercise Clause, because such decisions neither coerce conduct inconsistent with religious belief nor penalize religious activity. The constitutional guarantee we interpret today, however, draws no such fine distinctions between types of restraints on religious exercise, but rather is directed against any form of governmental action that frustrates or inhibits religious practice. Because the Court today refuses even to acknowledge the constitutional injury respondents will suffer, and because this refusal essentially leaves Native Americans with absolutely no constitutional protection against perhaps the gravest threat to their religious practices, I dissent.
I
For at least 200 years and probably much longer, the Yurok, Karok, and Tolowa Indians have held sacred an approximately 25-square-mile area of land situated in what is today the Blue Creek Unit of Six Rivers National Forest in northwestern California. As the Government readily concedes, regular visits to this area, known to respondent Indians as the “high country,” have played and continue to play a “critical” role in the religious practices and rituals of these Tribes. Brief for Petitioners 3. Those beliefs, only briefly described in the Court’s opinion, are crucial to a proper understanding of respondents’ claims.
As the Forest Service’s commissioned study, the Theodoratus Report, explains, for Native Americans religion is not a discrete sphere of activity separate from all others, and any attempt to isolate the religious aspects of Indian life “is in reality an exercise which forces Indian concepts into non-Indian categories.” App. 110; D. Theodoratus, Cultural Resources of the Chimney Rock Section, Gasquet-Orleans Road, Six Rivers National Forest (1979). Thus, for most Native Americans, “[t]he area of worship cannot be delineated from *460social, political, cultural], and other areas o[f] Indian lifestyle.” American Indian Religious Freedom,' Hearings on S. J. Res. 102 before the Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, 95th Cong., 2d Sess., 86 (1978) (statement of Barney Old Coyote, Crow Tribe). A pervasive feature of this lifestyle is the individual’s relationship with the natural world; this relationship, which can accurately though somewhat incompletely be characterized as one of stewardship, forms the core of what might be called, for want of a better nomenclature, the Indian religious experience. While traditional Western religions view creation as the work of a deity “who institutes natural laws which then govern the operation of physical nature,” tribal religions regard creation as an ongoing process in which they are morally and religiously obligated to participate. U. S. Federal Agencies Task Force, American Indian Religious Freedom Act Report 11 (1979) (Task Force Report). Native Americans fulfill this duty through ceremonies and rituals designed to preserve and stabilize the earth and to protect humankind from disease and other catastrophes. Failure to conduct these ceremonies in the manner and place specified, adherents believe, will result in great harm to the earth and to the people whose welfare depends upon it. Id., at 10.
In marked contrast to traditional Western religions, the belief systems of Native Americans do not rely on doctrines, creeds, or dogmas. Established or universal truths — the mainstay of Western religions — play no part in Indian faith. Ceremonies are communal efforts undertaken for specific purposes in accordance with instructions handed down from generation to generation. Commentaries on or interpretations of the rituals themselves are deemed absolute violations of the ceremonies, whose value lies not in their ability to explain the natural world or to enlighten individual believers but in their efficacy as protectors and enhancers of tribal existence. Ibid. Where dogma lies at the heart of Western religions, Native American faith is inextricably *461bound to the use of land. The site-specific nature of Indian religious practice derives from the Native American perception that land is itself a sacred, living being. See Suagee, American Indian Religious Freedom and Cultural Resources Management: Protecting Mother Earth’s Caretakers, 10 Am. Ind. L. Rev. 1, 10 (1982). Rituals are performed in prescribed locations not merely as a matter of traditional orthodoxy, but because land, like all other living things, is unique, and specific sites possess different spiritual properties and significance. Within this belief system, therefore, land is not fungible; indeed, at the time of the Spanish colonization of the American Southwest, “all. . . Indians held in some form a belief in a sacred and indissoluble bond between themselves and the land in which their settlements were located.” E. Spicer, Cycles of Conquest: The Impact of Spain, Mexico, and the United States on the Indians of the Southwest, 1533-1960, p. 576 (1962).
For respondent Indians, the most sacred of lands is the high country where, they believe, prehuman spirits moved with the coming of humans to the Earth. Because these spirits are seen as the source of religious power, or “medicine,” many of the tribes’ rituals and practices require frequent journeys to the area. Thus, for example, religious leaders preparing for the complex of ceremonies that underlie the Tribes’ World Renewal efforts must travel to specific sites in the high country in order to attain the medicine necessary for successful renewal. Similarly, individual tribe members may seek curative powers for the healing of the sick, or personal medicine for particular purposes such as good luck in singing, hunting, or love. A period of preparation generally precedes such visits, and individuals must select trails in the sacred area according to the medicine they seek and their abilities, gradually moving to increasingly more powerful sites, which are typically located at higher altitudes. Among the most powerful of sites are Chimney Rock, Doctor Rock, and Peak 8, all of which are elevated rock outcroppings.
*462According to the Theodoratus Report, the qualities “of silence, the aesthetic perspective, and the physical attributes, are an extension of the sacredness of [each] particular site.” App. 148. The act of medicine making is akin to meditation: the individual must integrate physical, mental, and vocal actions in order to communicate with the prehuman spirits. As a result, “successful use of the high country is dependent upon and facilitated by certain qualities of the physical environment, the most important of which are privacy, silence, and an undisturbed natural setting.” Id., at 181. Although few Tribe members actually make medicine at the most powerful sites, the entire Tribe’s welfare hinges on the success of the individual practitioners.
Beginning in 1972, the Forest Service began preparing a multiple-use management plan for the Blue Creek Unit. The plan’s principal features included the harvesting of 733 million board feet of Douglas fir over an 80-year period and the completion of a 6-mile segment of paved road running between two northern California towns, Gasquet and Orleans (the G-0 road). The road’s primary purpose was to provide a route for hauling the timber harvested under the management plan; in addition, it would enhance public access to the Six Rivers and other national forests, and allow for more efficient maintenance and fire control by the Forest Service itself. In the mid-1970’s, the Forest Service circulated draft environmental impact statements evaluating the effects of several proposed routes for the final segment of the G-0 road, including at least two that circumnavigated the high country altogether. Ultimately, however, the Service settled on a route running along the Chimney Rock Corridor, which traverses the Indians’ sacred lands.
Respondent Indians brought suit to enjoin implementation of the plan, alleging that the road construction and timber harvesting would impermissibly interfere with their religious practices in violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First *463Amendment.1 Following a trial, the District Court granted the requested injunctive relief. The court found that “use of the high country is essential to [respondents’] ‘World Renewal’ ceremonies . . . which constitute the heart of the Northwest Indian religious belief system,” and that “‘[intrusions on the sanctity of the Blue Creek high country are . . . potentially destructive of the very core of Northwest [Indian] religious beliefs and practices.’” Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Assn. v. Peterson, 565 F. Supp. 586, 594-595 (ND Cal. 1983) (quoting the Theodoratus Report, at 420). Concluding that these burdens on respondents’ religious practices were sufficient to trigger the protections of the Free Exercise Clause, the court found that the interests served by the G-0 road and the management plan were insufficient to justify those burdens. In particular, the court found that the road would not improve access to timber resources in the Blue Creek Unit and indeed was unnecessary to the harvesting of that timber; that it would not significantly improve the administration of the Six Rivers National Forest; and that it would increase recreational access only marginally, and at the expense of the very pristine environment that makes the area suitable for primitive recreational use in the first place. 565 F. Supp., at 595-596. The court further found that the unconnected segments of the road had independent utility,2 and that although completion of the *464Chimney Rock segment would reduce timber-hauling costs, it would not generate new jobs but would instead merely shift work from one area of the region to another. Id., at 596. Finally, in enjoining the proposed harvesting activities, the court found that the Blue Creek Unit’s timber resources were but a small fraction of those located in the entire National Forest and that the local timber industry would not suffer seriously if access to this fraction were foreclosed. Ibid.
While the case was pending on appeal before the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, Congress passed the California Wilderness Act of 1984, Pub. L. 98-425, 98 Stat. 1619, which designates most of the the Blue Creek Unit a wilderness area, and thus precludes logging- and all other commercial activities in most of the area covered by the Forest Service’s management plan. Thereafter, the Court of Appeals affirmed the District Court’s determination that the proposed harvesting and construction activities violated respondents’ constitutional rights. Recognizing that the high country is “indispensable” to the religious lives of the approximately 5,000 Tribe members who reside in the area, Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Assn. v. Peterson, 795 F. 2d 688, 692 (1986), the court concluded “that the proposed government operations would virtually destroy the . . . Indians' ability to practice their religion.'' Id., at 693 (emphasis added).3 Like the lower court, the Court of Appeals found *465the Government’s interests in building the road and permitting limited timber harvesting — interests which of course were considerably undermined by passage of the California Wilderness Act — did not justify the destruction of respondents’ religion. Id., at 695.
II
The Court does not for a moment suggest that the interests served by the G-0 road are in any way compelling, or that they outweigh the destructive effect construction of the road will have on respondents’ religious practices. Instead, the Court embraces the Government’s contention that its prerogative as landowner should always take precedence over a claim that a particular use of federal property infringes religious practices. Attempting to justify this rule, the Court argues that the First Amendment bars only outright prohibitions, indirect coercion, and penalties on the free exercise of religion. All other “incidental effects of government programs,” it concludes, even those “which may make it more difficult to practice certain religions but which have no tendency to coerce individuals into acting contrary to their religious beliefs,” simply do not give rise to constitutional concerns. See ante, at 450. Since our recognition nearly half a century ago that restraints on religious conduct implicate the concerns of the Free Exercise Clause, see Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U. S. 158 (1944), we have never suggested that the protections of the guarantee are limited to so narrow a range of governmental burdens. The land-use decision challenged here will restrain respondents from practicing their religion as surely and as completely as any of the governmental actions we. have struck down in the past, and the Court’s efforts simply to define away respondents’ in*466jury as nonconstitutional are both unjustified and ultimately unpersuasive.
A
The Court ostensibly finds support for its narrow formulation of religious burdens in our decisions in Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Comm’n of Fla., 480 U. S. 136 (1987), Thomas v. Review Bd., Indiana Employment Security Division, 450 U. S. 707 (1981), and Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398 (1963). In those cases, the laws at issue forced individuals to choose between adhering to specific religious tenets and forfeiting unemployment benefits on the one hand, and accepting work repugnant to their religious beliefs on the other. The religions involved, therefore, lent themselves to the coercion analysis the Court espouses today, for they proscribed certain conduct such as munitions work (Thomas) or working on Saturdays (Sherbert, Hobbie) that the unemployment benefits laws effectively compelled. In sustaining the challenges to these laws, however, we nowhere suggested that such coercive compulsion exhausted the range of religious burdens recognized under the Free Exercise Clause.
Indeed, in Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205 (1972), we struck down a state compulsory school attendance law on free exercise grounds not so much because of the affirmative coercion the law exerted on individual religious practitioners, but because of “the impact that compulsory high school attendance could have on the continued survival of Amish communities.” Id., at 209 (emphasis added). Like respondents here, the Amish view life as pervasively religious and their faith accordingly dictates their entire lifestyle. See id., at 210. Detailed as their religious rules are, however, the parents in Yoder did not argue that their religion expressly proscribed public education beyond the eighth grade; rather, they objected to the law because “the values ... of the modern secondary school are in sharp conflict with the fundamental mode of life mandated by the Amish religion.” Id., at 217 (emphasis added). By exposing Amish children “to a *467‘worldly’ influence in conflict with their beliefs,” and by removing those children “from their community, physically and emotionally, during the crucial and formative adolescent period of life” when Amish beliefs are inculcated, id., at 211, the compulsory school law posed “a very real threat of undermining the Amish community and religious practice.” Id., at 218. Admittedly, this threat arose from the compulsory nature of the law at issue, but it was the “impact” on religious practice itself, not the source of that impact, that led us to invalidate the law.
I thus cannot accept the Court’s premise that the form of the government’s restraint on religious practice, rather than its effect, controls our constitutional analysis. Respondents here have demonstrated that construction of the G-0 road will completely frustrate the practice of their religion, for as the lower courts found, the proposed logging and construction activities will virtually destroy respondents’ religion, and will therefore necessarily force them into abandoning those practices altogether. Indeed, the Government’s proposed activities will restrain religious practice to a far greater degree here than in any of the cases cited by the Court today. None of the religious adherents in Hobbie, Thomas, and Sherbert, for example, claimed or could have claimed that the denial of unemployment benefits rendered the practice of their religions impossible; at most, the challenged laws made those practices more expensive. Here, in stark contrast, respondents have claimed — and proved — that the desecration of the high country will prevent religious leaders from attaining the religious power or medicine indispensable to the success of virtually all their rituals and ceremonies. Similarly, in Yoder the compulsory school law threatened to “undermin[e] the Amish community and religious practice,” and thus to force adherents to “abandon belief ... or ... to migrate to some other and more tolerant region.” 406 U. S., at 218. Here the threat posed by the desecration of sacred lands that are indisputably essential to *468respondents’ religious practices is both more direct and more substantial than that raised by a compulsory school law that simply exposed Amish children to an alien value system. And of course respondents here do not even have the option, however unattractive it might be, of migrating to more hospitable locales; the site-specific nature of their belief system renders it nontransportable.
Ultimately, the Court’s coercion test turns on a distinction between governmental actions that compel affirmative conduct inconsistent with religious belief, and those governmental actions that prevent conduct consistent with religious belief. In my view, such a distinction is without constitutional significance. The crucial word in the constitutional text, as the Court itself acknowledges, is “prohibit,” see ante, at 451, a comprehensive term that in no way suggests that the intended protection is aimed only at governmental actions that coerce affirmative conduct.4 Nor does the Court’s distinction comport with the principles animating the constitutional guarantee: religious freedom is threatened no less by governmental action that makes the practice of one’s chosen faith impossible than by governmental programs that pressure one to engage in conduct inconsistent with religious beliefs. The Court attempts to explain the line it draws by arguing that the protections of the Free Exercise Clause “cannot depend on measuring the effects of a governmental action on a religious objector’s spiritual development,” ibid., *469for in a society as diverse as ours, the Government cannot help but offend the “religious needs and desires” of some citizens. Ante, at 452. While I agree that governmental action that simply offends religious sensibilities may not be challenged under the Clause, we have recognized that laws that affect spiritual development by impeding the integration of children into the religious community or by increasing the expense of adherence to religious principles — in short, laws that frustrate or inhibit religious practice — trigger the protections of the constitutional guarantee. Both common sense and our prior cases teach us, therefore, that governmental action that makes the practice of a given faith more difficult necessarily penalizes that practice and thereby tends to prevent adherence to religious belief. The harm to the practitioners is the same regardless of the manner in which the government restrains their religious expression, and the Court’s fear that an “effects” test will permit religious adherents to challenge governmental actions they merely find “offensive” in no way justifies its refusal to recognize the constitutional injury citizens suffer when governmental action not only offends but actually restrains their religious practices. Here, respondents have demonstrated that the Government’s proposed activities will completely prevent them from practicing their religion, and such a showing, no less than those made out in Robbie, Thomas, Sherbert, and Yoder, entitles them to the protections of the Free Exercise Clause.
B
Nor can I agree with the Court’s assertion that respondents’ constitutional claim is foreclosed by our decision in Bowen v. Roy, 476 U. S. 693 (1986). There, applicants for certain welfare benefits objected to the use of a Social Security number in connection with the administration of their 2-year-old daughter’s application for benefits, contending that such use would “rob the [child’s] spirit” and thus interfere with her spiritual development. In rejecting that chai*470lenge, we stated that “[t]he Free Exercise Clause simply cannot be understood to require the Government to conduct its own internal affairs in ways that comport with the religious beliefs of particular citizens.” Id., at 699 (emphasis added); see also id., at 716-717 (Stevens, J., concurring in part) (“[T]he Free Exercise Clause does not give an individual the right to dictate the Government’s method of recordkeeping”). Accordingly, we explained that Roy could
“no more prevail on his religious objection to the Government’s use of a Social Security number for his daughter than he could on a sincere religious objection to the size or color of the Government’s filing cabinets. The Free Exercise Clause affords an individual protection from certain forms of governmental compulsion; it does not afford an individual a right to dictate the conduct of the Government’s internal procedures.” Id., at 700 (emphasis added).
Today the Court professes an inability to differentiate Roy from the present case, suggesting that “[t]he building of a road or the harvesting of timber on publicly owned land cannot meaningfully be distinguished from the use of a Social Security number.” Ante, at 449. I find this inability altogether remarkable. In Roy, we repeatedly stressed the “internal” nature of the Government practice at issue: noting that Roy objected to “the widespread use of the social security number by the federal or state governments in their computer systems,” 476 U. S., at 697 (citation omitted; internal quotation marks omitted; emphasis added), we likened the use of such recordkeeping numbers to decisions concerning the purchase of office equipment. When the Government processes information, of course, it acts in a purely internal manner, and any free exercise challenge to such internal recordkeeping in effect seeks to dictate how the Government conducts its own affairs.
Federal land-use decisions, by contrast, are likely to have substantial external effects that government decisions con*471cerning office furniture and information storage obviously will not, and they are correspondingly subject to public scrutiny and public challenge in a host of ways that office equipment purchases are not.5 Indeed, in the American Indian Religious Freedom Act (AIRFA), 42 U. S. C. § 1996, Congress expressly recognized the adverse impact land-use decisions and other governmental actions frequently have on the site-specific religious practices of Native Americans, and the Act accordingly directs agencies to consult with Native American religious leaders before taking actions that might impair those practices. Although I agree that the Act does not create any judicially enforceable rights, see ante, at 455, the absence of any private right of action in no way undermines the statute’s significance as an express congressional determination that federal land management decisions are not “internal” Government “procedures,” but are instead governmental actions that can and indeed are likely to burden Native American religious practices. That such decisions should be subject to constitutional challenge, and potential constitutional limitations, should hardly come as a surprise.
The Court today, however, ignores Roy’s emphasis on the internal nature of the Government practice at issue there, *472and instead construes that case as further support for the proposition that governmental action that does not coerce conduct inconsistent with religious faith simply does not implicate the concerns of the Free Exercise Clause. ‘ That such a reading is wholly untenable, however, is demonstrated by the cruelly surreal result it produces here: governmental action that will virtually destroy a religion is nevertheless deemed not to “burden” that religion. Moreover, in AIRFA Congress explicitly acknowledged that federal “policies and regulations” could and often did “intrud[e] upon [and] interfere] with” site-specific Native American religious ceremonies, Pub. L. 95-341, 92 Stat. 469, and in Roy we recognized that this Act — “with its emphasis on protecting the freedom to believe, express, and exercise a religion — accurately identifies the mission of the Free Exercise Clause itself.” 476 U. S., at 700. Ultimately, in Roy we concluded that, however much the Government’s recordkeeping system may have offended Roy’s sincere religious sensibilities, he could not challenge that system under the Free Exercise Clause because the Government’s practice did not “in any degree impair Roy’s ‘freedom to believe, express, and exercise’ his religion.” Id., at 700-701 (quoting AIRFA, 42 U. S. C. § 1996) (emphasis added). That determination distinguishes the injury at issue here, which the Court finds so “remarkably similar” to Roy’s, ante, at 456, for respondents have made an uncontroverted showing that the proposed construction and logging activities will impair their freedom to exercise their religion in the greatest degree imaginable, and Congress has “accurately identified]” such injuries as falling within the scope of the Free Exercise Clause. The Court’s reading of Roy, therefore, simply cannot be squared with our endorsement — in that very same case — of this congressional determination. More important, it lends no support to the Court’s efforts to narrow both the reach and promise of the Free Exercise Clause itself.
*473C
In the final analysis, the Court’s refusal to recognize the constitutional dimension of respondents’ injuries stems from its concern that acceptance of respondents’ claim could potentially strip the Government of its ability to manage and use vast tracts of federal property. See ante, at 452-453. In addition, the nature of respondents’ site-specific religious practices raises the specter of future suits in which Native Americans seek to exclude all human activity from such areas. Ibid. These concededly legitimate concerns lie at the very heart of this case, which represents yet another stress point in the longstanding conflict between two disparate cultures — the dominant Western culture, which views land in terms of ownership and use, and that of Native Americans, in which concepts of private property are not only alien, but contrary to a belief system that holds land sacred. Rather than address this conflict in any meaningful fashion, however, the Court disclaims all responsibility for balancing these competing and potentially irreconcilable interests, choosing instead to turn this difficult task over to the Federal Legislature. Such an abdication is more than merely indefensible as an institutional matter: by defining respondents’ injury as “nonconstitutional,” the Court has effectively bestowed on one party to this conflict the unilateral authority to resolve all future disputes in its favor, subject only to the Court’s toothless exhortation to be “sensitive” to affected religions. In my view, however, Native Americans deserve— and the Constitution demands — more than this.
Prior to today’s decision, several Courts of Appeals had attempted to fashion a test that accommodates the competing “demands” placed on federal property by the two cultures. Recognizing that the Government normally enjoys plenary authority over federal lands, the Courts of Appeals required Native Americans to demonstrate that any land-use decisions they challenged involved lands that were “central” or “indispensable” to their religious practices. See, e. g., Northwest *474Indian Cemetery Protective Assn. v. Peterson, 795 F. 2d 688 (CA9 1986) (case below); Wilson v. Block, 228 U. S. App. D. C. 166, 708 F. 2d 735, cert. denied, 464 U. S. 956 (1983); Badoni v. Higginson, 638 F. 2d 172 (CA10 1980), cert. denied, 452 U. S. 954 (1981); Sequoyah v. TVA, 620 F. 2d 1159 (CA6), cert. denied, 449 U. S. 953 (1980); Crow v. Gullet, 541 F. Supp. 785 (SD 1982), aff’d, 706 F. 2d 856 (CA8), cert. denied, 464 U. S. 977 (1983). Although this requirement limits the potential number of free exercise claims that might be brought to federal land management decisions, and thus forestalls the possibility that the Government will find itself ensnared in a host of Lilliputian lawsuits, it has been criticized as inherently ethnocentric, for it incorrectly assumes that Native American belief systems ascribe religious significance to land in a traditionally Western hierarchical manner. See Michaelsen, American Indian Religious Freedom Litigation: Promise and Perils, 3 J. Law & Rel. 47 (1985); Pepper, Conundrum of the Free Exercise Clause — Some Reflections on Recent Cases, 9 N. Ky. L. Rev. 265, 283-284 (1982). It is frequently the case in constitutional litigation, however, that courts are called upon to balance interests that are not readily translated into rough equivalents. At their most absolute, the competing claims that both the Government and Native Americans assert in federal land are fundamentally incompatible, and unless they are tempered by compromise, mutual accommodation will remain impossible.
I believe it appropriate, therefore, to require some showing of “centrality” before the Government can be required either to come forward with a compelling justification for its proposed use of federal land or to forgo that use altogether. “Centrality,” however, should not be equated with the survival or extinction of the religion itself. In Yoder, for example, we treated the objection to the compulsory school attendance of adolescents as “central” to the Amish faith even though such attendance did not prevent or otherwise render the practice of that religion impossible, and instead simply *475threatened to “undermine” that faith. Because of their perceptions of and relationship with the natural world, Native Americans consider all land sacred. Nevertheless, the Theodoratus Report reveals that respondents here deemed certain lands more powerful and more directly related to their religious practices than others. Thus, in my view, while Native Americans need not demonstrate, as respondents did herp, that the Government’s land-use decision will assuredly eradicate their faith, I do not think it is enough to allege simply that the land in question is held sacred. Rather, adherents challenging a proposed use of federal land should be required to show that the decision poses a substantial and realistic threat of frustrating their religious practices. Once such a showing is made, the burden should shift to the Government to come forward with a compelling state interest sufficient to justify the infringement of those practices.
The Court today suggests that such an approach would place courts in the untenable position of deciding which practices and beliefs are “central” to a given faith and which are not, and invites the prospect of judges advising some religious adherents that they “misunderstand their own religious beliefs.” Ante, at 458. In fact, however, courts need not undertake any such inquiries: like all other religious adherents, Native Americans would be the arbiters of which practices are central to their faith, subject only to the normal requirement that their claims be genuine and sincere. The question for the courts, then, is not whether the Native American claimants understand their own religion, but rather whether they have discharged their burden of demonstrating, as the Amish did with respect to the compulsory school law in Yoder, that the land-use decision poses a substantial and realistic threat of undermining or frustrating their religious practices. Ironically, the Court’s apparent solicitude for the integrity of religious belief and its desire to forestall the possibility that courts might second-guess the *476claims of religious adherents leads to far greater inequities than those the Court postulates: today’s ruling sacrifices a religion at least as old as the Nation itself, along with the spiritual well-being of its approximately 5,000 adherents, so that the Forest Service can build a 6-mile segment of road that two lower courts found had only the most marginal and speculative utility, both to the Government itself and to the private lumber interests that might conceivably use it.
Similarly, the Court’s concern that the claims of Native Americans will place “religious servitudes” upon vast tracts of federal property cannot justify its refusal to recognize the constitutional injury respondents will suffer here. It is true, as the Court notes, that respondents’ religious use of the high country requires privacy and solitude. The fact remains, however, that respondents have never asked the Forest Service to exclude others from the area. Should respondents or any other group seek to force the Government to protect their religious practices from the interference of private parties, such a demand would implicate not only the concerns of the Free Exercise Clause, but also those of the Establishment Clause as well. That case, however, is most assuredly not before us today, and in any event cannot justify the Court’s refusal to acknowledge that the injuries respondents will suffer as a result of the Government’s proposed activities are sufficient to state a constitutional cause of action.
Ill
Today, the Court holds that a federal land-use decision that promises to destroy an entire religion does not burden the practice of that faith in a manner recognized by the Free Exercise Clause. Having thus stripped respondents and all other Native Americans. of any constitutional protection against perhaps the most serious threat to their age-old religious practices, and indeed to their entire way of life, the Court assures us that nothing in its decision “should be read to encourage governmental insensitivity to the religious *477needs of any citizen.” Ante, at 453. I find it difficult, however, to imagine conduct more insensitive to religious needs than the Government’s determination to build a marginally useful road in the face of uncontradicted evidence that the road will render the practice of respondents’ religion impossible. Nor do I believe that respondents will derive any solace from the knowledge that although the practice of their religion will become “more difficult” as a result of the Government’s actions, they remain free to maintain their religious beliefs. Given today’s ruling, that freedom amounts to nothing more than the right to believe that their religion will be destroyed. The safeguarding of such a hollow freedom not only makes a mockery of the “ ‘policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, and exercise the[ir] traditional religions,”’ ante, at 454 (quoting AIRFA), it fails utterly to accord with the dictates of the First Amendment.
I dissent.

 Respondent Indians were joined in this suit by the State of California as well as various environmental groups. For the sake of simplicity, I use the term “respondents” to refer exclusively to the affected Native American religious practitioners.

 The Court overlooks this finding when it suggests that the only protective measure the Service did not take was the untenable one of “abandoning its project entirely, and thereby leaving the two existing segments of road to dead-end in the middle of a National Forest.” Ante, at 454. Far from finding that option untenable, the District Court expressly concluded that the segments had independent economic and administrative utility, and thus that past investments in the paved sections did not justify construction of the Chimney Rock segment. See 565 F. Supp., at 596.

 Remarkably, the Court treats this factual determination as nothing more than an assumption or “prediction,” ante, at 451, and suggests that it is “less than certain that construction of the road will be so disruptive that it will doom [respondents’] religion.” Ibid. Such speculation flies in the face of the most basic principles of appellate review, see Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 52(a) (“Findings of fact. . . shall not be set aside unless clearly erroneous”), and is wholly at odds with the well-settled rule that this Court will not disturb findings of facts agreed upon by both lower courts unless those findings are clearly in error. United States v. Ceccolini, 435 U. S. 268, 273 (1978). Even if our review were not governed by such rules, however, the mere fact that a handful of the Native Americans who reside in the *465affected area do not oppose the road in no way casts doubt upon the validity of the lower courts’ amply supported factual findings, particularly where the members of this minority did not indicate whether their lack of objection reflected their assessment of the religious significance of the high country, or their own apathy towards religious matters generally.

 The Court is apparently of the view that the term “prohibit” in the Free Exercise Clause somehow limits the constitutional protection such that it cannot possibly be understood to reach “ ‘any form of government action that frustrates or inhibits religious practice.’ ” Ante, at 456 (quoting supra, at 459) (emphasis added by majority). Although the dictionary is hardly the final word on the meaning of constitutional language, it is noteworthy that Webster’s includes, as one of the two accepted definitions of “prohibit,” “to prevent from doing something.” Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary 940 (1983). Government action that frustrates or inhibits religious practice fits far more comfortably within this definition than does the Court’s affirmative compulsion test.

 Thus, for example, agencies proposing to use or permit activities on federal lands must comply with various public notice, consultation, and impact evaluation requirements imposed by the National Historic Preservation Act, 16 U. S. C. §§ 470f, 470h-2(f); the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, 16 U. S. C. § 470aa et seq.; the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, 42 U. S. C. § 4321 et seq.; the Wilderness Act, 16 U. S. C. § 1131 et seq.; and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, 33 U. S. C. § 1251 et seq. Concededly, these statutes protect interests in addition to the religious interests Native Americans may have in a pristine environment, and of course the constitutional protection afforded those religious interests is not dependent upon these congressional enactments. Nevertheless, the laws stand as evidence, if indeed any were needed, that federal land-use decisions are fundamentally different from government decisions concerning information management, and that, under Roy, this difference in external effects is of constitutional magnitude.