City of Boerne, Texas v. Flores

The city of Boerne, Texas, had refused to allow a Catholic church to enlarge its building in a neighborhood zoned for historic preservation. The church then sued the city, claiming that under the Religious Restoration Act of 1993 it was interfering with the practice of a religious institution.

Congress passed the act in response to a 1990 Supreme Court decision, Employment Division v. Smith, which held that members of a Native American church who used peyote in their rituals were not exempt from Oregon's narcotics laws. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act had broad support in Congress, garnering a unanimous vote in the House of Representatives and all but three votes in the Senate. Congress invoked section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment in passing the new law, which provided that Congress had the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the amendment's guarantees of due process and equal protection of the laws. While a ruling of the Supreme Court can be overturned only by a constitutional amendment, supporters of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act insisted that they were not confronting the justices but merely legislating a new standard of review for laws affecting religion. A federal district judge in San Antonio declared the law unconstitutional on the grounds that Congress has usurped the federal judiciary's exclusive authority to interpret the meaning of the Constitution, but the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed that decision and upheld the statute. The act was also unpopular in the states, and some sixteen states filed friends of the court briefs that recounted, among other things, that prisoners were making often fanciful religious claims under the law.

The question before the Supreme Court was whether Congress was appropriately enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment by passing the act or instead going beyond its authority and giving a substantive meaning to the amendment. Justice Kennedy for the majority held that Congress had exceeded its authority because it was determining what amounted to a constitutional violation, a task left under the Constitution exclusively to the federal courts. According to Kennedy, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was not a remedial action or preventative measure but an attempt at forming a substantive change in constitutional interpretation. In perhaps its most significant constitutional finding, the majority ruled that there had to be some congruence or proportionality between the means adopted by Congress and the end to be achieved in enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment. Through its actions, Kennedy concluded, Congress had placed a burden on the states that made it difficult, if not impossible, for them to exercise their traditional authority to regulate the health and welfare of their citizens.

The dissenters, led by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, agreed with the standard the majority applied to congressional action under the Fourteenth Amendment, but they disagreed about the basis that the majority had relied on. O'Connor believed that the proper course of action was to overturn the Smith decision rather than declare the Religious Freedom Restoration Act unconstitutional.

City of Boerne was the third case in three years in which the Court had struck down major congressional acts that limited the power of the states. In Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida (1996) it invalidated part of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, and in United States v. Lopez (1995) it ruled that a federal gun control law exceeded the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. As a result, the decision in City of Boerne was not so much about church and state relations, although it had important consequences for them, but instead about the limits placed on Congress's expansive interpretation of its own powers. The justices made clear that they would not tolerate the other branches of government trespassing on their role of determining conclusively what the Constitution means.

— Kermit L. Hall

• 117 S.Ct. 2157 (1997)
• Vote: 6–3
• For the Court: Kennedy
• Dissenting: O'Connor, Souter, and Breyer

A Roman Catholic priest in a small West Texas city, Boerne, wanted to enlarge the St. Peter's Church. But the city government refused to grant a construction permit for an addition to the small 70-year-old church because it was located in a neighborhood designated by the local government as a historic preservation zone. The purpose of this zoning law was to maintain historic sites by preventing or limiting new construction that would significantly change the appearance of the city's historic district.

Archbishop P. F. Flores of the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Antonio, in which the city of Boerne was located, filed suit to force the city government to permit enlargement of St. Peter's Church. He based his suit on the city's presumed violation of a federal law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993.

The RFRA limited the power of federal, state, and local governments to enforce laws that “substantially burden” the free exercise of religion. Such a “burdensome” law could be carried out only if the government could demonstrate a “compelling” public justification for doing so, and if it was “the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.” Those whose constitutional rights to free exercise of religion had been “substantially burdened,” as Archbishop Flores claimed, could “in a judicial proceeding … obtain appropriate relief against a government.”

Using the RFRA to support his case, Archbishop Flores argued that the city of Boerne, through its zoning laws, was illegally interfering with the practices of a religious institution and thereby substantially burdening its constitutionally protected free exercise of religion. The federal district court ruled in favor of the city of Boerne and concluded that the RFRA was unconstitutional. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, however, disagreed. It upheld the RFRA as constitutional and reversed the lower court's decision. So the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court for resolution.

The Issue

When Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it relied upon the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. Section 1 of the amendment guarantees that a state cannot deprive a person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and it cannot deny to any person the equal protection of the laws. Section 5 of the 14th Amendment empowers Congress to enforce these guarantees through enactment of appropriate laws.

In its enactment of the RFRA, Congress claimed that this law was needed to effectively protect a person's 1st Amendment right to free exercise of religion at state and local levels of government. The majority in Congress was concerned about possible state government infringement of rights to religious liberty due to the Supreme Court's decision in Employment Division Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, (1990). This ruling had overturned a constitutional standard set in Sherbert v. Verner (1963), which declared that to survive judicial scrutiny, a law restricting the free exercise of religion must advance a compelling public interest of government in the least restrictive manner possible. The RFRA was intended by Congress to restore the “compelling interest” and “least restrictive means” standards of the Sherbert v. Verner decision.

Counsel for the city of Boerne, Marcia Hamilton, argued that the RFRA, on which Archbishop Flores based his lawsuit against the city, was unconstitutional because it represented an expansion of Congress's authority beyond the scope allowed by the Constitution. Thus, the RFRA violated the constitutional principles of separation of powers and federalism.

Does Congress have power under the 14th Amendment to define rights to religious freedoms more broadly than the U.S. Supreme Court, as it did in the RFRA? And does the RFRA thereby violate the constitutional principles of separation of powers among the three branches of the federal government and the principles of federalism, the division of powers between the federal and state governments?

Opinion of the Court

Writing for the Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy held that Congress went beyond its constitutionally sanctioned power by attempting to substantially interpret the Constitution through legislation. Thus, Congress usurped a power belonging exclusively to the federal courts under the Constitution. This amounts to violation of the constitutional principle of separation of powers. Further, Justice Kennedy concluded that through the RFRA, Congress had unconstitutionally infringed upon the authority of state governments to regulate the health, safety, or general welfare of their citizens. So the RFRA was a violation of the constitutional principle of federalism.

Jutice Kennedy wrote, “Congress's discretion is not unlimited… and the courts retain the power, as they have since Marbury v. Madison, to determine if Congress has exceeded its authority under the Constitution. Broad as the power of Congress is under the Enforcement Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, RFRA contradicts vital principles necessary to maintain separation of powers and the federal balance.”

Dissent

The dissenters, led by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, agreed with the Court's majority that Congress cannot redefine or expand the scope of constitutional rights by legislation. However, she disagreed with the Court's majority in its use of the Smith decision (1990) as the ruling predent because she believed the holding in Smith had been decided wrongly. She argued for reconsidering the Smith decision as bad constitutional law instead of declaring the RFRA unconstitutional.

Significance

Although the city of Boerne won its case, city officials offered a compromise agreement to the local Roman Catholic Church officials. They agreed to allow an enlargement of St. Peter's Church by 850 seats. But 80 percent of the building was to be left intact.

Some public reactions to the Court's decision were not as generous or accommodating as the response of the city of Boerne's government. Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, for example, said that the Court “once again acted to push religion to the fringes of society.” The winning lawyer in this case, Marcia Hamilton, said, “Congress does not have the power to amend the Constitution unilaterally.”

Although the City of Boerne decision had important consequences for church and state relationships, its primary significance pertained to limitations on Congress's authority to expand its constitutional powers in relationship to the other branches of the federal government and the state governments. The Supreme Court clearly and emphatically served notice to the other branches of government that it has the conclusive power to say what the Constitution means and what it does not mean.