Justices Revisit Unsettled Issue in Santeria Case : Law: Arguments about a city’s ban of ‘ritualistic animal sacrifice’ will weigh religious expression against animal rights.

WASHINGTON —  The first complaints came when carcasses of chickens, ducks and goats began turning up on lawns, along streets, at cemeteries and in rivers in south Florida.

Residents of Hialeah, a Miami suburb, grew angrier when they learned that hundreds of animals were being slaughtered in ritualistic ceremonies by members of an Afro-Caribbean religious sect. In 1987, when a priest in the growing sect announced plans to build a church, the City Council, spurred on by an outraged community, took action.

It enacted a series of laws that made it a crime, punishable by a $500 fine and up to 60 days in jail, to carry out a “ritualistic animal sacrifice” within the city.

Now, the issue is before the Supreme Court, and it provides a fascinating test of the Constitution’s guarantee of the “free exercise of religion.”

Lawyers for a dozen major church groups, from the American Jewish Committee to the National Assn. of Evangelicals, have joined in urging the court to strike down Hialeah’s restrictions. They say this nation was founded on the principle that immigrants would be protected in their freedom to worship, no matter how unpopular their religion.

The Santeria faith originated in West Africa 4,000 years ago, and it came to the Caribbean via slave ships, according to its leaders. A priest in Hialeah asserted that 75,000 adherents now live in south Florida.

For the ordination of new priests, as many as 50 animals are killed, their throats slit and the blood drained into clay pots. Through this ritual, the sins of the faithful are said to pass on to the dying animals.

But the new city laws “have basically suppressed this religion,” said University of Texas law professor Douglas Laycock, who is representing the followers of Santeria.

“The police watch over them, and the church has been shut down,” Laycock said. “If that isn’t discrimination against a religion, then nothing is.”

Laycock notes that Florida law protects the rights of hunters to kill animals for sport and recreation. Anglers may reel in fish simply as trophies for their walls. And certainly, millions of animals are killed each year for food, or in the case of rodents, for reasons of health and sanitation.

“Hialeah has not made it a crime to kill animals. Rather, Hialeah has made it a crime to sacrifice animals to your God,” Laycock said in a brief filed with the court.

The case, which will be argued before the justices on Wednesday, also marks the first time the high court will rule directly on a claim involving animal rights.

Eleven animal protection groups, including the Humane Society, joined the case on the side of city officials. They noted that unlike cattle or pigs in a slaughterhouse the animals sacrificed by the Santeria followers are not stunned before their throats are cut. As a result, the animals die a terrifying and painful death, a practice that should be ended regardless of its religious significance, the groups say.

The government “is not required to tolerate rampant primitivism in the name of religion,” lawyers for the International Society for Animals Rights say. “The prevention of cruelty to animals, the protection of citizenry from disease-rotting carrion and the securing of society against a return to barbarism” are all compelling reasons for upholding the laws, they argue.

The case, Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye vs. Hialeah, 91-948, forces the Supreme Court to revisit a confused and unsettled area of the law.

The First Amendment forbids the government to enact laws “prohibiting the free exercise of religion.” No one questions that religious beliefs are shielded from public regulation.

But the justices have struggled repeatedly when the practices of a minority religion clash with the accepted standards of American society. Through most of its history, the high court could be trusted to side with the majority. For example, the court in 1879 upheld criminal laws against polygamy, even though the Mormom faith called for men to have more than one wife.

But in the mid-20th Century, the court began to broadly protect the rights of religious dissidents. For example, the justices in 1943 said the children of Jehovah’s Witnesses cannot be forced to salute the American flag. Later, the court said Amish children cannot be compelled to attend school. At the high-water mark of the court’s liberal era in the 1960s, the justices said states may not deny unemployment benefits to Seventh Day Adventists who refuse to take jobs that would require them to work on Saturdays.

The court set a formula for deciding such cases: An individual’s claim of religious freedom would prevail over a government policy, except when officials had the most “compelling reason” for limiting that freedom. For example, officials could insist on medical treatment for the gravely ill child of a Christian Scientist, even though doing so violated the parent’s faith. The child’s welfare was compelling. But the law generally tilted in favor of people who said their actions were based on a sincere religious belief.

But in 1990, the court reversed the formula. In future cases, “neutral, generally applicable laws” would prevail over conflicting religious claims, the justices said in a 5-4 decision. In that case, Oregon vs. Smith, the court upheld the state’s firing of two American Indian drug counselors who used the illegal drug peyote during a religious service.

Soon after, dozens of church organizations asked the high court to reconsider the ruling. They noted that it put traditional practices at risk. For example, a priest who serves communal wine to a child could be charged with a crime because “neutral, generally applicable laws” forbid serving alcohol to minors.

The justices refused. The pending animal sacrifice case marks the first time the justices have reconsidered the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty since the peyote ruling.

Laycock says the Santeria church should prevail because the Hialeah laws are not neutral. Speakers before the City Council had called the arrival of the Santeria followers a “return to paganism,” he noted.

A federal judge who tried the case in 1989 agreed, concluding that the laws were “not religiously neutral.” Nonetheless, he upheld them on the grounds that they protected the health of the community, prevented cruelty to animals and shielded children from the “adverse psychological effect” of seeing animals sacrificed.

The ordinances do not discriminate based on religion, the judge said, because they “prohibit all animal sacrifices, whether it be practiced by an individual, a religion or a cult.” A U.S. appeals court in Atlanta affirmed that judgment last year.

An attorney for the city said officials must have the power to protect public health. In the past, the courts have also endorsed the use of zoning laws to keep out slaughterhouses.

“We have not prevented them from opening their church. They are just not permitted to practice animal sacrifices,” said Richard Garrett, the attorney for Hialeah.

But Fernando Pichardo, a Santeria priest, said the sacrifices are an integral part of the religion.

“This faith is thousands of years older than Christ,” he said. “If they can stop this, what’s to stop them from saying, ‘No more sacramental wine. No more passing of wafers. No more circumcisions?’ They are basically saying you can discriminate against a religion.” A ruling in the case is likely early next year.