Supreme Court asked to hear religious freedom sacred land dispute

The U.S. Supreme Court has been asked to weigh a religious freedom case involving redevelopment of a portion of a San Antonio park where members of the Lipan Native American Church say they have conducted ceremonies for centuries.

First Liberty Institute and the University of Texas School of Law’s Law and Religion Clinic filed a petition last week asking the nation’s highest court to reverse a ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

An appeals court upheld a lower court’s decision, allowing the City of San Antonio to move forward with a redevelopment project at a site that has served as a place of worship for numerous tribes for centuries, including the Lipan Apache Tribe. 

Stephanie Taub, senior counsel for the First Liberty Institute, argued that the City of San Antonio can redevelop the area “without bulldozing a centuries old native American religious site.”

“The Lipan church relies on the unique spiritual ecology of the ancient riverbend,” Taub said in a Monday statement provided to The Christian Post. “The city telling them they can ‘just go worship elsewhere’ is nothing short of the government redefining their religious beliefs.”

The San Antonio City Attorney’s Office defended the city’s position in a statement to CP, stating, “The City stands by its position that has already been upheld by the trial court and the Fifth Circuit.”

The case centers around the city’s Brackenridge Park improvement project, which includes repairing retaining walls along the San Antonio River, stabilizing a historic pump house and constructing a wheelchair-accessible ramp.

Members of the Lipan Native American Church have repeatedly argued that the city’s redevelopment project for Brackenridge Park would remove heritage trees and use bird-deterrent measures that would drive away nesting cormorants.

The tribe argues that these measures would be an “erasure of the [site’s] ‘spiritual ecology,’” which the petition asserts would “destroy Petitioners’ ability to exercise their religion.”

As part of its Brackenridge Park improvement project, the petition states that the City plans “to remove or relocate 83% of the 83 trees surrounding the [riverbend]” that members of the Lipan Native American Church view as sacred.

The city will also have to conduct “significant excavation behind the retaining walls,” which the petition notes will require “substantial tree removal and relocation.”

“Bulldozing a religious site is the definition of burdening religious practice,” Professor Steven T. Collis, director of the UT Law and Religion Clinic, said in a Monday statement provided to CP.

“Both the courts and the city are aware that our clients can worship nowhere else but this site, yet both have told them they are mistaken in their religious beliefs and can just go somewhere else,” Collis continued. “That violates the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, as does refusing to do available, less-destructive alternatives.”

According to the petition to the Supreme Court, the 5th Circuit “recognized that Petitioners believe some religious ceremonies can be ‘performed only at this riverbend’ and ‘cannot be properly administered without specific trees present and cormorants nesting.’”

The petition claims that the 5th Circuit ignored those religious beliefs and said that “there was no substantial burden.” The 5th Circuit decided that there was no burden because the petitioners still retain access to other areas of the over 340-acre park, and it argued that cormorants can nest elsewhere.

“That reasoning is a theological judgment disguised as a burden analysis. Both Religion Clauses of the First Amendment forbid it,” the petition to the nation’s highest court states.

“Whether a claim arises under the Free Exercise Clause, federal religious freedom statutes, or state law, when determining if a burden on religion exists, judicial analysis must remain within the boundaries of the Religion Clauses,” the document continues.