Monday's Supreme Court ruling allowing a Colorado baker to refuse making a wedding cake for a gay couple had its roots in a Hialeah case that involved the city, a church and animal sacrifices.
The 1993 landmark Hialeah case, Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, stemmed from the city banning ritual animal killings after the the Hialeah-based church announced its intention to make these offerings in the name of Santeria, the Afro-Cuban religion.
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against the Hialeah ban. In the majority opinion, written by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, he said “religious beliefs need not be acceptable, logical, consistent or comprehensible to others in order to merit First Amendment protection.”
The Hialeah ordinances, he wrote, “were enacted by officials who did not understand, failed to perceive, or chose to ignore the fact that their official actions violated the nation’s essential commitment to religious freedom.”
Kennedy, in the Colorado ruling, put forth a similar legal argument, citing the Hialeah case.
Read more at our news partner, the Miami Herald.
