As a society America has used morals and ethics to make appropriate laws to govern their people. The people decided that, ethically, anyone should be able to practice their religion. However Floridians reach a large moral dilemma when a religion based on animal sacrifice is brought to their attention. The abolishment of the aforementioned animal sacrifice was immediately attempted, yet never happened due to the religious freedoms implemented by the founding fathers.
The problem first began when the Cuban Revolution brought large amounts of Cuban exiles to Hialeah, a good size town at the bottom of Florida. A small Afro-Cuban religious group called the Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye decides that they are now in America to stay. The Church of …show more content…
The City of Hialeah became distraught. The Church hadn’t even been built, and still people worried. The people of Hialeah grew to be so scared of having a Lucumi based religion in their town that “in response, the city council held an emergency public session”.
Subsequently, the City of Hialeah passed ordinances and regulations that “prohibited possession of animals for sacrifice or slaughter, with specific exemptions for state-licensed activities” to try to squash the church, but the government made the laws target Lucumi too specifically, as it also “contained exceptions for animal killings under comparable circumstances and for other religion-related purposes, including kosher slaughter”. The Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, seeing that they were being targeted specifically by the government, did what no one expected them to …show more content…
Their sacrifice based fear mongering worked in lower court, but the Church of Lukumi fought hard. The Church brought up Florida’s, at the time, relaxed hunting laws as an example as to how Hialeah wasn’t protecting people or animals, but their own religion. The court found that Hialeah’s laws were too specific to not be targeting the church directly. The court states that “under the constitution, a law that is not neutral, but targets a specific action, and that does not apply generally to all people, but targets a specific group, must be justified by a compelling governmental interest and narrowly tailored to advance that interest” The ordinances put in place by the city of Hialeah were clearly not in the borders of the neutrality stated by the court seeing as the ordinances didn’t even affect other religions. The court decided that the laws put in place were clearly put there to suppress the Santerian religions since the only action prohibited was animal sacrifice which was a main element of the religion. The court was split on how to rule this
The problem first began when the Cuban Revolution brought large amounts of Cuban exiles to Hialeah, a good size town at the bottom of Florida. A small Afro-Cuban religious group called the Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye decides that they are now in America to stay. The Church of …show more content…
The City of Hialeah became distraught. The Church hadn’t even been built, and still people worried. The people of Hialeah grew to be so scared of having a Lucumi based religion in their town that “in response, the city council held an emergency public session”.
Subsequently, the City of Hialeah passed ordinances and regulations that “prohibited possession of animals for sacrifice or slaughter, with specific exemptions for state-licensed activities” to try to squash the church, but the government made the laws target Lucumi too specifically, as it also “contained exceptions for animal killings under comparable circumstances and for other religion-related purposes, including kosher slaughter”. The Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, seeing that they were being targeted specifically by the government, did what no one expected them to …show more content…
Their sacrifice based fear mongering worked in lower court, but the Church of Lukumi fought hard. The Church brought up Florida’s, at the time, relaxed hunting laws as an example as to how Hialeah wasn’t protecting people or animals, but their own religion. The court found that Hialeah’s laws were too specific to not be targeting the church directly. The court states that “under the constitution, a law that is not neutral, but targets a specific action, and that does not apply generally to all people, but targets a specific group, must be justified by a compelling governmental interest and narrowly tailored to advance that interest” The ordinances put in place by the city of Hialeah were clearly not in the borders of the neutrality stated by the court seeing as the ordinances didn’t even affect other religions. The court decided that the laws put in place were clearly put there to suppress the Santerian religions since the only action prohibited was animal sacrifice which was a main element of the religion. The court was split on how to rule this