Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah
Did a series of city ordinances that prohibited ritual animal sacrifice, while permitting virtually all other forms of animal killing, violate the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment?
The Decision
9-0 decision · Opinion by Anthony Kennedy · 1993
Majority Opinion— Anthony Kennedyconcurring ↓
In a unanimous 9–0 decision authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme Court struck down all of Hialeah's ordinances as unconstitutional violations of the Free Exercise Clause. The Court held that the ordinances were neither neutral nor generally applicable — the two requirements that, under Employment Division v. Smith, would have allowed the laws to survive without strict judicial scrutiny. Because the ordinances failed both requirements, the Court applied strict scrutiny, the most demanding standard of constitutional review, and found the ordinances could not survive.
Justice Kennedy's opinion methodically dismantled the city's claim that the ordinances were neutral and generally applicable. On neutrality, the Court examined both the text and the operation of the laws and found that they were drafted with surgical precision to target Santería sacrifice while leaving all comparable secular animal killing untouched. The laws used terms like 'ritual' and 'sacrifice' that had no secular meaning in context. Hunters, fishers, and slaughterhouses were exempt. The only realistic application of the laws was to Santería practitioners. Kennedy wrote that 'the Free Exercise Clause protects against governmental hostility which is masked, as well as overt,' and found ample evidence of both in this case.
On general applicability, the Court found that the ordinances were dramatically underinclusive — they failed to prohibit vast categories of animal killing that posed the same public health and cruelty concerns the city claimed to be addressing. If the city's real concern was preventing cruelty to animals, there was no logical reason to exempt hunting and fishing. If the concern was sanitation, there was no reason to permit the disposal of animal remains from restaurants and slaughterhouses while criminalizing disposal from religious rituals. This underinclusiveness demonstrated that the ordinances targeted religious conduct, not the harms the city claimed to be preventing.
Applying strict scrutiny, the Court held that even assuming the city had compelling interests in public health and preventing animal cruelty, the ordinances were not narrowly tailored to achieve those goals. The city could have addressed sanitation concerns with general regulations about waste disposal, and animal welfare concerns with generally applicable anti-cruelty laws — neither of which would have singled out religious practice. Because the laws were so poorly fitted to the city's stated goals, and because narrower alternatives clearly existed, the ordinances failed strict scrutiny and were struck down.
Concurring Opinions
Although the judgment was unanimous, several justices wrote separately to express different reasoning. Justice Scalia, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, concurred but objected to parts of Justice Kennedy's analysis that looked into the subjective motivations of individual council members, arguing that the focus should be on the objective text and operation of the law rather than what legislators privately intended. Justice Souter wrote a concurrence suggesting the Court should reconsider Employment Division v. Smith, which he believed had been wrongly decided. Justice Blackmun, joined by Justice O'Connor, also concurred but argued more forcefully that Smith should be overruled and that the traditional strict scrutiny test from Sherbert v. Verner should be restored for all free exercise claims, not just those involving laws that lack neutrality or general applicability.
Background & Facts
The Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye practiced Santería, an Afro-Caribbean religion with roots in the Yoruba people of West Africa that blended with elements of Roman Catholicism. A central element of Santería worship is animal sacrifice — practitioners kill chickens, pigeons, goats, and other animals during rituals devoted to spirits called orishas. The animals are typically cooked and eaten afterward. In April 1987, the church announced plans to lease land and establish a house of worship, a school, a cultural center, and a museum in the city of Hialeah, Florida, a suburb of Miami.
The announcement provoked immediate and intense community backlash. The Hialeah city council held an emergency public session in June 1987, during which residents and officials voiced open hostility toward the Santería religion. The city council president called the religion 'an abomination to the Lord' and stated the city's intent to do everything within its power to prevent the church from operating. Over the following months, the council enacted a series of ordinances that, in various formulations, prohibited the 'sacrifice' of animals and the killing of animals in 'rituals' or 'ceremonies' not for the primary purpose of food consumption. The ordinances carried criminal penalties including fines and imprisonment.
Critically, however, the ordinances were written in a way that left almost every other form of animal killing completely legal. Hunters, fishers, exterminators, slaughterhouses, and even those who killed animals for non-religious reasons in their homes were all exempt. Kosher slaughter was not affected. The only conduct the ordinances effectively prohibited was the Santería practice of ritual sacrifice. The church challenged the ordinances as a violation of its rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida ruled in favor of the city after a trial, finding that the ordinances served compelling governmental interests in public health and preventing animal cruelty, and were the least restrictive means of achieving those goals. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision without issuing a full written opinion. The Supreme Court then agreed to hear the case, recognizing the significance of the free exercise questions it raised.
The Arguments
The church argued that Hialeah's ordinances were not neutral, generally applicable laws but were specifically designed to suppress the religious practice of Santería animal sacrifice. Because the laws singled out religiously motivated conduct while leaving identical secular conduct untouched, they violated the Free Exercise Clause and must be struck down.
- The ordinances used words like 'sacrifice,' 'ritual,' and 'ceremony' — terms that specifically described religious conduct — revealing that the laws were targeted at Santería practices rather than animal welfare in general.
- Almost every secular form of animal killing remained perfectly legal under the ordinances, including hunting, fishing, pest extermination, euthanasia of strays, and industrial slaughter, demonstrating that the laws were gerrymandered to apply only to religious killings.
- The public record of the city council sessions showed open hostility and animosity toward Santería, proving that the real purpose of the ordinances was to suppress a disfavored religion rather than to protect any legitimate public interest.
The city argued that the ordinances were valid, generally applicable public health and animal welfare regulations that only incidentally burdened religious practice. Under the Court's recent precedent in Employment Division v. Smith, neutral laws of general applicability do not violate the Free Exercise Clause even if they burden religious conduct.
- The ordinances served compelling government interests in preventing animal cruelty and protecting public health from the unsanitary disposal of animal carcasses in residential areas.
- The city contended the ordinances were facially neutral because they did not mention any specific religion by name and applied to anyone who engaged in animal sacrifice, regardless of religious affiliation.
- Under Employment Division v. Smith, the Free Exercise Clause does not require exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws, and the city argued its ordinances qualified as such.