Liberties facing threats

PROVO — Religious liberties in the United States are being threatened with a relatively new judicial standard that upholds laws deemed "neutral and generally applicable" rather than protecting the free exercise of religion.

The topic was one of dozens being discussed before tens of thousands of participants at Brigham Young University's annual Education Week, which opened Monday with a limited scheduled but was in full swing Tuesday morning. The conference — featuring hundreds of LDS speakers and musicians — continues through Friday.

Von Keetch, an attorney for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, told scores of participants at a session on Tuesday that at least 10 religious liberties most Americans take for granted are being threatened.

They include:

• The right to build a church (and its accompanying steeple) on private property without undue interference from adjoining property owners or municipalities.

• The right of religious schools and churches to require that their employees be members of a specific faith.

• The right of religious youth groups or clubs to determine who will be allowed to lead or become a member of their organizations.

Since 1990, Keetch said, the U.S. Supreme Court has thrown out a decades-long legal precedent that favored religious rights over competing interests unless the government could prove a "compelling governmental interest that only infringed on religious belief as much as necessary."

The prevailing Supreme Court standard in religious rights cases has now become whether a law is "generally applicable and neutral" in its applications to churches, schools, businesses and other public entities. The result has been a slew of legal challenges involving everything from church construction and religious symbols on public property to fair housing laws, he said.

The LDS Church has been affected, with delayed construction of the steeple for the Boston temple and litigation seeking to prevent construction of another temple in Harrison, N.Y., through use of municipal ordinances and zoning restrictions.

The church recently lost a case in Westland, Ore., where city officials had crafted laws limiting the number of "non-profit" organizations allowed to locate within the city limits. Such laws are becoming more common across the country, Keetch said. Municipalities justify them by saying churches and other non-profits don't contribute to the tax base, so their numbers should be limited.

Because the argument is economic and doesn't single out religious non-profits, such laws meet the Supreme Court's definition of "generally applicable and neutral" in terms of discrimination.