Published October 15, 2024
On October 15, 2024, EPPC filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court, urging the Court to hear a case involving the planned destruction of a site Apache Stronghold uses for religious services. The Ninth Circuit had dismissed the Apaches’ case claiming that there was no substantial burden on their religious exercise, a necessary showing to bring a Religious Freedom Restoration Act claim.
The amicus brief, filed on behalf of EPPC and Religious Freedom Institute and drafted by Ian Speir of Covenant Law, PLLC, in collaboration with EPPC scholars Eric Kniffin and Rachel N. Morrison, explained that the Ninth Circuit got its RFRA analysis wrong. The brief explained RFRA’s five threshold limiting principles and how the Ninth Circuit misconceived its RFRA substantial burden analysis.
The brief argued:
Recognizing the obvious here—that destroying a unique religious site works a substantial burden on the Apaches’ sincere religious exercise—is a straightforward application of RFRA’s plain language. It does not open the floodgates for “any individual” to “exact” “easement[s]” on “all federal land,” nor does it invite courts to engage in theological speculation. To the contrary, it is the Ninth Circuit’s novel conception of the substantial burden analysis—walling off from RFRA’s scrutiny whatever vaguely qualifies as the government’s “internal affairs”—that will have pernicious effects far beyond this case.
The brief concluded by urging the Court to hear the case and clarify how the substantial burden analysis works in this and other cases.
This is the second brief EPPC has filed in support of the Apaches. In April 2024, EPPC scholar Eric Kniffin filed an amicus brief on behalf of twenty-one Mennonite bodies, urging the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case en banc. But the court refused, leading to the Apaches’ current appeal to the Supreme Court.
Eric Kniffin is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he works on a range of initiatives to protect and strengthen religious liberty as part of EPPC’s Administrative State Accountability Project.
