Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah
The Supreme Court struck down a set of Hialeah, Florida ordinances that banned animal sacrifice, ruling that the city had written the laws specifically to shut down the Santería religion's ritual killings while leaving nearly every other kind of animal killing untouched.
Because the ordinances targeted religious conduct rather than treating it the same as comparable secular activity, the Court applied its strictest constitutional test and found the city's stated health and animal-welfare justifications could not save them, reaffirming that laws aimed at suppressing a specific religious practice get almost no benefit of the doubt.
“The Free Exercise Clause commits government itself to religious tolerance, and upon even slight suspicion that proposals for state intervention stem from animosity to religion or distrust of its practices, all officials must pause to remember their own high duty to the Constitution and to the rights it secures.”
The Court's closing statement on government's duty of religious tolerance.
How it got here: A federal trial court ruled for the city after a bench trial, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed in a one-paragraph order, and the Church asked the Supreme Court to review the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
The Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye and its priest planned to open a Santer\u00eda house of worship in Hialeah, Florida, openly practicing the faith's ritual of animal sacrifice. Alarmed residents and city officials responded with a series of resolutions and ordinances banning ritual animal killing, while continuing to allow hunting, kosher slaughter, pest extermination, and other non-religious animal killing.
The question before the Court
Could a city ban animal sacrifice through ordinances written broadly enough that, in practice, they mainly stopped one minority religion's central ritual?
Why it matters
Religious minorities practicing rituals that make some neighbors uncomfortable gained a clear precedent that cities cannot use vague public-morals language or narrowly drafted 'neutral' ordinances to single out disfavored faiths. Local governments must now show that any law burdening religious practice serves goals it pursues evenhandedly against comparable non-religious conduct, not just the religious version of it.
What changes now
The ordinances are void, meaning the Church may resume open ritual animal sacrifice in Hialeah without violating city law. This is a final merits decision, not a temporary order, so no further proceedings are needed to resolve the free exercise claim. The decision leaves open, for a future case, whether the Court should reconsider the broader rule about neutral, generally applicable laws that only incidentally burden religion, an issue several concurring justices urged the Court to revisit.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether a truly neutral, generally applicable anti-cruelty law—one not aimed at religion and not riddled with secular exemptions—could still require a religious exemption. Several justices also flagged unresolved tension over whether neutral laws that merely have the incidental effect of burdening religion should ever require a compelling justification, an issue left for a future case.
Concurrences and dissents
How the Justices voted
Majority (1). Justice Kennedy (author).
Separate writings (3). Justice Scalia (author of a concurrence).
Concurrence — Justice Scalia
Justice Scalia agreed with nearly all of the majority's reasoning and joined the judgment, but refused to join the portion of the opinion examining the Hialeah City Council's subjective motives. He argued the First Amendment concerns the effects of laws, not the sincerity or malice of the people who passed them, and that courts should not try to divine a collective legislature's true intent. Read the full concurrence →
Concurrence in part — Justice Souter
Justice Souter agreed the ordinances were unconstitutional but declined to join the majority's discussion applying the Smith neutral-and-generally-applicable-law rule, arguing that rule was announced without full briefing and sits in tension with older free exercise cases requiring compelling justification even for neutral laws. He urged the Court to reexamine Smith in a future case that squarely presents the issue.
Concurrence — Justice Blackmun
Justice Blackmun agreed with the outcome but rejected reliance on the Smith framework altogether, reiterating his view that Smith was wrongly decided. He would have required the government to justify any burden on religious practice, intentional or not, with a compelling interest pursued by the least restrictive means, and noted this case did not decide whether a sincerely neutral anti-cruelty law could survive without a religious exemption. Read the full concurrence →
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the two-part test from a recent precedent: a law burdening religion is only subject to relaxed review if it is both neutral (not designed to target religion) and generally applicable (not selectively enforced against religious conduct); otherwise it must survive the strictest constitutional test, requiring a compelling government interest pursued through the least restrictive means.
- Examining the ordinances' text, history, and real-world operation, the Court found they were not neutral: the words chosen, the public statements of city officials at the enactment hearings, and the pattern of exemptions all showed the city meant to stop Santería sacrifice specifically rather than animal killing generally.
- The Court also found the ordinances lacked general applicability because they were carefully drafted, through definitions and exemptions, to reach almost no killing except religious sacrifice while exempting hunting, pest control, kosher slaughter, and euthanasia even though those activities implicated the same stated concerns.
- Because the ordinances failed both requirements, the Court applied strict scrutiny and found the city's asserted interests in public health and animal welfare were not truly compelling, since the laws left so much comparable non-religious killing entirely unregulated.
- The Court concluded that laws this underinclusive relative to their stated purpose could not be considered narrowly tailored or genuinely aimed at the interests the city claimed, since a law protecting a truly vital interest would not leave so much similar harmful conduct untouched.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith (494 U. S. 872)
The Court applies and relies on Smith's neutral-and-generally-applicable-law test rather than disturbing it.