Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association (1988)

Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association (1988)

485 U.S. 439

In 1982 the United States Forest Service decided to build a six-mile paved road (the G-O road) through federal land, including the Chimney Rock area of the Six Rivers National Forest, to link two preexisting roads. In doing so, the Service rejected the recommendation of a study it had commissioned, which argued that the road not be built or that a route outside the Chimney Rock area be selected. Because this area had historically been used by certain Native Americans for religious rituals that depended on privacy, silence, and an undisturbed natural setting, the study concluded that building the road would irreparably harm the religious areas. Although the Forest Service rejected the study’s recommendations, the route it selected avoided archeological sites and was removed as far as possible from the sites used for spiritual activities. At about the same time, the Service approved a management plan permitting limited timber harvesting in the area, with protective zones around all religious sites.

The respondents in this case filed suit in district court, claiming that the road proposal and the decision to permit timber harvesting violated their rights under the Free Exercise Clause. The district court issued a permanent injunction against the road construction and timber harvesting, and the court of appeals affirmed.  

Opinion of the Court: O’Connor, Rehnquist, White, Stevens, Scalia.

Dissenting opinion: Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun.

MRS. JUSTICE O’CONNOR delivered the opinion of the Court. 

This case requires us to consider whether the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause forbids the Government from permitting timber harvesting in, or constructing a road through, a portion of a National Forest that has traditionally been used for religious purposes by members of three American Indian tribes in northwestern California. We conclude that it does not.… It is undisputed that the Indian respondents’ beliefs are sincere and that the Government’s purposed actions will have severe adverse effects on the practice of their religion. Respondents contend that the burden on their religious practices is heavy enough to violate the Free Exercise Clause unless the Government can demonstrate a compelling need to complete the G-O road or to engage in timber harvesting in the Chimney Rock area. We disagree.…

In Bowen v. Roy (1986), we considered a challenge to a federal statute that required the States to use Social Security numbers in administering certain welfare programs. Two applicants for benefits under these programs contended that their religious beliefs prevented them from acceding to the use of a Social Security number for their two year-old daughter because the use of a numerical identifier would “‘rob the spirit’ of [their] daughter and prevent her from attaining greater spiritual power.” … The Court rejected this kind of challenge in Roy: 

The Free Exercise Clause simply cannot be understood to require the Government to conduct its own internal affairs in ways that comport with the religious beliefs of particular citizens. Just as the Government may not insist that [the Roys] engage in any set form of religious observance, so [they] may not demand that the Government join in their chosen religious practices by refraining from using a number to identify their daughter.… 

The Free Exercise Clause affords an individual protection from certain forms of governmental compulsion; it does not afford an individual a right to dictate the conduct of the Government’s internal procedures. 

The building of a road or the harvesting of timber on publicly owned land cannot meaningfully be distinguished from the use of a Social Security number in Roy. In both cases, the challenged government action would interfere significantly with private persons’ ability to pursue spiritual fulfillment according to their own religious beliefs. In neither case, however, would the affected individuals be coerced by the Government’s action into violating their religious beliefs; nor would either governmental action penalize religious activity by denying any person an equal share of the rights, benefits, and privileges enjoyed by other citizens. 

We are asked to distinguish this case from Roy on the ground that the infringement on religious liberty here is “significantly greater,” or on the ground that the government practice in Roy was “purely mechanical” whereas this case involves “a case-by-case substantive determination as to how a particular unit of land will be managed.” … These efforts to distinguish Roy are unavailing. This Court cannot determine the truth of the underlying beliefs that led to the religious objections here or in Roy, … and accordingly cannot weigh the adverse effects on the Roys and compare them with the adverse effects on respondents. Without the ability to make such comparisons, we cannot say that the one form of incidental interference with an individual’s spiritual activities should be subjected to a different constitutional analysis than the other.… 

Whatever may be the exact line between unconstitutional prohibitions on the free exercise of religion and the legitimate conduct by government of its own affairs, the location of the line cannot depend on measuring the effects of a governmental action on a religious objector’s spiritual development.… Even if we assume that we should accept the Ninth Circuit’s prediction, according to which the G-O road will “virtually destroy the Indians’ ability to practice their religion,” … the Constitution simply does not provide a principle that could justify upholding respondents’ legal claims. However much we might wish that it were otherwise, government simply could not operate if it were required to satisfy every citizen’s religious needs and desires. A broad range of government activities—from social welfare programs to foreign aid to conservation projects—will always be considered essential to the spiritual well-being of some citizens, often on the basis of sincerely held religious beliefs. Others will find the very same activities deeply offensive, and perhaps incompatible with their own search for spiritual fulfillment and with the tenets of their religion. The First Amendment must apply to all citizens alike, and it can give to none of them a veto over public programs that do not prohibit the free exercise of religion. The Constitution does not, and courts cannot, offer to reconcile the various competing demands on government, many of them rooted in sincere religious belief, that inevitably arise in so diverse a society as ours. That task, to the extent that it is feasible, is for the legislatures and other institutions. Cf. The Federalist No. 10 (suggesting that the effects of religious factionalism are best restrained through competition among a multiplicity of religious sects).… 

Perceiving a “stress point in the long-standing conflict between two disparate cultures,” the dissent attacks us for declining to “balanc[e] these competing and potentially irreconcilable interests, choosing instead to turn this difficult task over to the federal legislature.” … Seeing the Court as the arbiter, the dissent proposes a legal test under which it would decide which public lands are “central” or “indispensable” to which religions, and by implication which are “dispensable” or “peripheral,” and would then decide which government programs are “compelling” enough to justify “infringement of those practices.” … We would accordingly be required to weigh the value of every religious belief and practice that is said to be threatened by any government program. Unless a “showing of ‘centrality,’” … is nothing but an assertion of centrality, … the dissent thus offers us the prospect of this Court holding that some sincerely held religious beliefs and practices are not “central” to certain religions, despite protestations to the contrary from the religious objectors who brought the lawsuit. In other words, the dissent’s approach would require us to rule that some religious adherents misunderstand their own religious beliefs. We think such an approach cannot be squared with the Constitution or with our precedents, and that it would cast the judiciary in a role that we were never intended to play. 

MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, with whom MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL and MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN join, dissenting. 

“‘[T]he Free Exercise Clause,’” the Court explains today, “‘is written in terms of what the government cannot do to the individual, not in terms of what the individual can exact from the government. Pledging fidelity to this unremarkable constitutional principle, the Court nevertheless concludes that even where the Government uses federal land in a manner that threatens the very existence of a Native American religion, the Government is simply not “doing” anything to the practitioners of that faith. Instead, the Court believes that Native Americans who request that the Government refrain from destroying their religion effectively seek to exact from the Government de facto beneficial ownership of federal property. These two astonishing conclusions follow naturally from the Court’s determination that federal land-use decisions that render the practice of a given religion impossible do not burden that religion in a manner cognizable under the Free Exercise Clause, because such decisions neither coerce conduct inconsistent with religious belief nor penalize religious activity. The constitutional guarantee we interpret today, however, draws no such fine distinctions between types of restraints on religious exercise, but rather is directed against any form of governmental action that frustrates or inhibits religious practice. Because the Court today refuses even to acknowledge the constitutional injury respondents will suffer, and because this refusal essentially leaves Native Americans with absolutely no constitutional protection against perhaps the gravest threat to their religious practices, I dissent.… 

The Court does not for a moment suggest that the interests served by the G-O road are in any way compelling, or that they outweigh the destructive effect construction of the road will have on respondents’ religious practices.… Respondents here have demonstrated that construction of the G-O road will completely frustrate the practice of their religion, for as the lower courts found, the proposed logging and construction activities will virtually destroy respondents’ religion, and will therefore necessarily force them into abandoning those practices altogether. Indeed, the Government’s proposed activities will restrain religious practice to a far greater degree here than in any of the cases cited by the Court today.… The Court attempts to explain the line it draws by arguing that the protections of the Free Exercise Clause “cannot depend on measuring the effects of a governmental action on a religious objector’s spiritual development,” … for in a society as diverse as ours, the Government cannot help but offend the “religious needs and desires” of some citizens.… While I agree that governmental action that simply offends religious sensibilities may not be challenged under the Clause, we have recognized that laws that affect spiritual development by impeding the integration of children into the religious community or by increasing the expense of adherence to religious principles—in short, laws that frustrate or inhibit religious practice—trigger the protections of the constitutional guarantee. Both common sense and our prior cases teach us, therefore, that governmental action that makes the practice of a given faith more difficult necessarily penalizes that practice and thereby tends to prevent adherence to religious belief. The harm to the practitioners is the same regardless of the manner in which the Government restrains their religious expression, and the Court’s fear that an “effects” test will permit religious adherents to challenge governmental actions they merely find “offensive” in no way justifies its refusal to recognize the constitutional injury citizens suffer when governmental action not only offends but actually restrains their religious practices. Here, respondents have demonstrated that the Government’s proposed activities will completely prevent them from practicing their religion, and such a showing … entitles them to the protections of the Free Exercise Clause.… 

I believe it appropriate, therefore, to require some showing of “centrality” before the Government can be required either to come forward with a compelling justification for its proposed use of federal land or to forego that use altogether.… The Court today suggests that such an approach would place courts in the untenable position of deciding which practices and beliefs are “central” to a given faith and which are not, and invites the prospect of judges advising some religious adherents that they “misunderstand their own religious beliefs.” In fact, however, courts need not undertake any such inquiries: like all other religious adherents, Native Americans would be the arbiters of which practices are central to their faith, subject only to the normal requirement that their claims be genuine and sincere. The question for the courts, then, is not whether the Native American claimants understand their own religion, but rather, whether they have discharged their burden of demonstrating, as the Amish did with respect to the compulsory school law in Yoder, that the land use decision poses a substantial and realistic threat of undermining or frustrating their religious practices. Ironically, the Court’s apparent solicitude for the integrity of religious belief and its desire to forestall the possibility that courts might second guess the claims of religious adherents leads to far greater inequities than those the Court postulates: today’s ruling sacrifices a religion at least as old as the Nation itself, along with the spiritual wellbeing of its approximately 5,000 adherents, so that the Forest Service can build a 6-mile segment of road that two lower courts found had only the most marginal and speculative utility, both to the Government itself and to the private lumber interests that might conceivably use it.