Posted on 06/20/2017 10:05:13 PM PDT by ItsOnlyDaryl
For the first time in U.S. history, attorneys for an illegal immigrant in Houston are appealing to federal religious freedom laws to annul his impending deportation.
Lawyers representing Juan Rodriguez filed a lawsuit Monday on the unprecedented grounds that Rodriguez’s deportation would violate his family’s religious beliefs, specifically a Seventh Day Adventist requirement that requires families to remain together. Rodriguez’s lawyers hope that their lawsuit will be upheld based on the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) which “ensures that interests in religious freedom are protected.”
Rodriguez is represented by Raed González and receives legal counsel from three other members of the Hispanic Bar Association of Houston, including David Medina, a former justice of the Texas Supreme Court, according to the Houston Chronicle.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Easy solution then.
They all go together. We can accomodate them.
Easy solution to this problem. Family even says they are willing to stay with him. Deport him and let the family follow. I just don’t see why the big problem. He is here illegally, we decide to deport him. Family wants to stay together.....BYE!!
But breaking the law to be here doesn’t go against their religion?
Easy solution. Deport all of them.
Throw them all out...
This is easily remedied.
hmmm
Sounds like Seinfelds dentist converting to Judaism so he could tell the jokes....
hmmm
Sounds like Seinfelds dentist converting to Judaism so he could tell the jokes....
No one is forcing the family to be separated. They can return to Mexico with their illegal father and start over there.
If they were Sarcens they might get away with this ...
Yeppers I think they should win the lawsuit...
allow them all to stay together, leave together...
That train called The Beast goes south too...
Sorry nothing special about illegal Catholics!!!
Deport all Illegals ....... ASAP!
The Bill of Rights applies to American citizens, not ones who broke in illegally and are not Americans.
Let the family go with him.
The Hispanic Bar Association?????
Oh so now we’re going to have every nationality throughout the country with their own national Bar Association????? Talk about dividing this country by race and nationalities and cultures.....this stuff is never going to stop!
Looks to me like we’ve got more than just a few invasions going on in our country.
“Your Honor, I know I shot that old lady, but I can’t go to prison because that would separate me from my family. And that’s against my religion.”
While there have not been many legal tests of the “free-exercise” clause, existing precedence has generally held federal law superior to religious practice. In Reynolds v. United States (1878), the Mormon Church sued over the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act in an attempt to continue their polygamist practices. The majority opinion declared that the law was constitutional since it neither interfered with religious belief nor selectively outlawed religious practice. “To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land,” wrote Chief Justice Morrison Waite, “and, in effect, permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances.”
Almost a century later, Reynolds was reaffirmed in Employment Division v. Smith (1990). Oregon’s Employment Division fired Alfred Smith, a public employee, after he used peyote in a Native American Church ceremony. Justice Antonin Scalia, in the majority opinion, explained that the ban applied to everyone equally and that it would be unfair to give a private excuse. He held that religious exceptions would have undermined the law.
While Reynolds and Smith can be used to argue that the free-exercise clause has a rather narrow application, a concurring opinion in Smith by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor applied the test of “compelling government interest.” She argued that the government can only infringe on religious liberty when a compelling interest exists to do so. This test, established by Justice William Brennan, has been used in defense of religious liberty. In Sherbert v. Verner (1963), Adell Sherbert sued her employer when he extended her hours to include Saturdays—a day on which Sherbert, a Seventh-day Adventist, was religiously obliged not to work. The court ruled that the employer had placed a “substantial burden” on her and that the government lacked a compelling interest to deny benefits.
The hence-named “Sherbert Test” requires that an individual must prove sincere religious beliefs and substantial burden through government action. If these are established, the law is unconstitutional unless the government proves a “compelling state interest” and that the interest was pursued in the least intrusive way possible. The Sherbert Test had lasted fewer than 30 years when Smith changed the precedent; since then, the legal community has grown to scorn such tests. Nonetheless, Congress became concerned that religious exercise was at risk and passed the bipartisan Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) to legislatively establish the Sherbert Test. Though President Clinton strengthened the laws through executive orders, Boerne v. Flores (1997) established that Congress can only strengthen federal religious freedoms. Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal (2006) thus became the first use of RFRA and the Sherbert Test. Coincidentally, the Court ruled in Gonzales that the government had not established a compelling interest to limit the use of peyote tea in a New Mexico Native American ceremony.
http://harvardpolitics.com/covers/limits-of-religious-freedom/
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