Official finding Cuban Santería Santería contexts Hialeah, Florida, USA · 1993

United States: the Supreme Court protects animal sacrifice as religious practice — the corpus's boundary marker

Record class

Context only

Evidence status

Official finding

Authority role

a Santería church, and the municipality that legislated against its practice

Organization

Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, City of Hialeah

Spiritual nexus

NOT AN ABUSE CASE, and deliberately so. This corpus documents harm done through spiritual authority; it does not document religious practice. Animal sacrifice is lawful in Santería, Candomblé, Vodou and in the observance of Eid al-Adha, and this judgment is recorded so that boundary is explicit rather than assumed.

Ritual, oath, or initiation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

1993-06-11 · unanimous judgment for the church

Supreme Court of the United States — Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993). The Supreme Court unanimously struck down City of Hialeah ordinances that targeted Santería animal sacrifice, holding that laws burdening religious practice must be neutral and generally applicable and that these ordinances were neither. Animal sacrifice as practised in Santería is constitutionally protected religious exercise in the United States.

Documented coercion mechanisms

none — this record exists to mark where lawful religious practice ends and abuse begins

Primary record

Sources

official court judgment supreme court judgment Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993).: The Supreme Court's judgment.

Related record

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