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Liber XXXIV · Vodou & Hoodoo

Liber XXXIV · Vodou & Hoodoo · Chapter VII: Santería & the Orishas

Church of Lukumi v. Hialeah (1993): Santería at the Supreme Court

Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah (1993): how a Santería church won a unanimous Supreme Court ruling protecting its animal offerings.

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Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah (1993) is the United States Supreme Court case in which a Santería congregation in Florida successfully challenged city ordinances banning ritual animal sacrifice. The Court ruled unanimously, on 11 June 1993, that the ordinances violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment because they had been drafted to target one religion's practices while leaving almost all other killing of animals untouched.

Santería in South Florida and the Lukumi Church§

Santería, also called Regla de Ocha or Lukumí, developed in Cuba from the religion of Yoruba-speaking Africans and their descendants, who worshipped the orishas, the deities of the Yoruba tradition, alongside Catholic saints (see Santería and the Orishas). After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, and especially after the Mariel boatlift of 1980, large numbers of Cubans settled in South Florida, among them priests and initiates of the religion. Estimates cited in the litigation suggested that practitioners in the region numbered in the tens of thousands.

For most of its history Santería had been practised in private houses, with altars kept in back rooms and ceremonies held behind closed doors. Ernesto Pichardo, a Cuban-born priest of the religion, wanted to change that. He organised the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye as a Florida non-profit corporation in 1973, taking its name from Babalú Ayé, the orisha associated with illness and healing. In April 1987 the church leased land in Hialeah, a city in Miami-Dade County with a large Cuban population, and announced plans for a house of worship, a school, a cultural centre and a museum. The plan to bring the religion into the open provoked alarm among some residents and city officials.

Animal Offerings in Lukumí Religion§

At the centre of the dispute was a practice that outsiders found shocking and practitioners regard as sacred: the offering of animals to the orishas. Inherited from the Yoruba religion of West Africa (see African Traditional Religions), Lukumí belief holds that ashé, the divine power that sustains life, flows through blood, and certain rites, among them the initiation of priests, annual celebrations and some healing ceremonies, call for an animal offering (ebó). Most offerings are of chickens, doves and other fowl; goats and sheep are used for major rites. Only priests who have received a specific additional initiation are permitted to perform offerings of four-legged animals.

Practitioners stress that the animals are killed quickly by a trained priest and that in most rites the meat is cooked and eaten by the community, as at any traditional feast. In certain cleansing and healing rites the animal is believed to absorb misfortune or illness and is not eaten. Critics, including animal-welfare groups and some public-health officials, raised concerns about suffering, about the disposal of remains, and about animals kept in homes before rites. These concerns were real points of debate, and they remain so; the legal question was whether a city could address them by singling out one religion.

Hialeah's Ordinances of 1987§

On 9 June 1987 the Hialeah city council held an emergency public session on the church's plans. Council members and residents spoke strongly against Santería, and the record of the meeting, quoted later in the litigation, included remarks describing the religion as an abomination and its practitioners as in need of salvation. The council passed a resolution expressing concern that "certain religions" might engage in practices inconsistent with public morals and safety, and adopted Florida's animal-cruelty law as a city ordinance.

In September 1987 the council went further, passing three ordinances. One prohibited possessing an animal with the intent to sacrifice it, one made it unlawful to sacrifice an animal within the city, and one prohibited slaughter outside areas zoned for slaughterhouses, with an exemption for the small-scale slaughter of animals raised for food. The key ordinance defined sacrifice as killing an animal in a ritual or ceremony "not for the primary purpose of food consumption". In practice, the laws exempted kosher slaughter, commercial butchering, hunting, fishing, the euthanasia of strays, pest extermination and other killings, while reaching almost nothing except the rites of Santería.

The church sued in federal court. After a trial, District Judge Eugene Spellman ruled for the city in 1989, finding that the ordinances served compelling interests in public health and animal welfare. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in a brief decision in 1991, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, which was argued on 4 November 1992.

The Supreme Court's Decision§

The Supreme Court reversed unanimously. Writing for the Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy began from the rule set out three years earlier in Employment Division v. Smith (1990): a neutral law of general applicability does not violate the Free Exercise Clause even if it burdens a religious practice. But a law that is not neutral, or not generally applicable, must be justified by a compelling governmental interest and narrowly tailored to it, the demanding standard known as strict scrutiny.

Hialeah's ordinances, the Court held, failed both requirements. They were not neutral, because their object was to suppress the central ritual of one religion. The Court pointed to the wording of the laws, which used religious terms such as "sacrifice" and "ritual", and above all to their effect: the exemptions were so extensive that the ordinances had been, in the Court's words, "gerrymandered with care" to prohibit religious killings while allowing nearly all secular ones. Nor were they generally applicable, since the city's stated interests in health and animal welfare were threatened as much by the many killings it allowed as by those it forbade.

Under strict scrutiny the ordinances could not survive. The city could have regulated the disposal of remains or the treatment of animals through general laws applying to everyone. Kennedy also wrote, citing earlier precedent, that religious beliefs need not be "acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others" to deserve constitutional protection, a principle that has often been quoted in defence of minority religions.

Concurring Opinions and the Smith Debate§

Although the judgment was unanimous, the justices disagreed about the reasoning. In one part of his opinion, joined only by Justice John Paul Stevens, Kennedy relied on the hostile statements made at the council meeting as evidence of discriminatory purpose. Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, objected that courts should look at what a law does rather than the motives of legislators. Justice David Souter wrote separately to question whether Smith had been correctly decided, and Justice Harry Blackmun, joined by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, concurred in the judgment while arguing that Smith was wrong.

These opinions belong to a larger national debate. Smith had alarmed many religious groups, and in November 1993 Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which required strict scrutiny for laws substantially burdening religion. The Supreme Court limited that act's reach in 1997, holding that it could not be applied to the states, and many states then passed their own versions. Lukumi became the main precedent for the rule that laws targeting religion, openly or by design, receive the strictest review.

Legacy: Religious Freedom, Animal Welfare and Santería Today§

The decision has been cited in a great many later cases. Questions about neutrality and general applicability, the core of Lukumi, have been central in recent Supreme Court cases on religious exemptions, such as Fulton v. City of Philadelphia (2021). For Santería in particular, a later dispute in Texas showed the case's influence: in Merced v. Kasson (2009), the Fifth Circuit held that a Santería priest in Euless could perform animal offerings in his home under the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

For practitioners of Afro-Cuban religion, the case had a meaning beyond law. A tradition long practised in secret, and often depicted as dark magic (see Voodoo Myths and Misconceptions), had been recognised by the country's highest court as a religion entitled to the same respect as any other. Similar battles for legal recognition have been fought by other minority faiths, such as the Wiccans in Dettmer v. Landon.

The ruling did not end debate. Animal-welfare advocates continue to criticise ritual slaughter, while practitioners defend the offerings as central to their faith and point out that most Lukumí rites also involve offerings of food, drink, flowers, music and prayer. The case is also part of the wider history of how African diasporic religions have moved from persecution toward public recognition in the Americas.

Frequently asked questions§

What did the Supreme Court decide in Lukumi v. Hialeah?§

The Court held unanimously that Hialeah's ordinances banning ritual animal sacrifice violated the Free Exercise Clause. The laws targeted the practices of Santería while exempting almost all other killing of animals, so they were neither neutral nor generally applicable and could not survive strict scrutiny.

The ruling does not make every form of animal sacrifice legal everywhere. It means governments cannot single out religious killings for prohibition; general laws on animal cruelty, health and the disposal of remains still apply to everyone, including religious practitioners.

Who was Ernesto Pichardo?§

Ernesto Pichardo, a Cuban-born Santería priest, organised the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye in 1973. He led the church's effort to practise openly in Hialeah and became the public face of the case.

Why does Santería involve animal offerings?§

In Lukumí belief, offerings sustain the relationship between people and the orishas and channel ashé, the divine force of life. Animal offerings are made only in certain rites by specially initiated priests, and in most cases the meat is cooked and shared as a communal meal.

Sources and further reading§