Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520, 45 (1993)

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564

CHURCH OF LUKUMI BABALU AYE, INC. v. HIALEAH

Opinion of Souter, J.

today, and the Court's intimations on the matter are therefore dicta.

The Court also rightly finds Hialeah's laws to fail the test of general applicability, and as the Court "need not define with precision the standard used to evaluate whether a prohibition is of general application, for these ordinances fall well below the minimum standard necessary to protect First Amendment rights," ante, at 543, it need not discuss the rules that apply to prohibitions found to be generally applicable. The question whether "there are areas of conduct protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and thus beyond the power of the State to control, even under regulations of general applicability," Yoder, 406 U. S., at 220, is not before the Court in this case, and, again, suggestions on that score are dicta.

II

In being so readily susceptible to resolution by applying the Free Exercise Clause's "fundamental nonpersecution principle," ante, at 523, this is far from a representative free-exercise case. While, as the Court observes, the Hialeah City Council has provided a rare example of a law actually aimed at suppressing religious exercise, ante, at 523-524, Smith was typical of our free-exercise cases, involving as it did a formally neutral, generally applicable law. The rule Smith announced, however, was decidedly untypical of the cases involving the same type of law. Because Smith left those prior cases standing, we are left with a free-exercise jurisprudence in tension with itself, a tension that should be addressed, and that may legitimately be addressed, by reexamining the Smith rule in the next case that would turn upon its application.

A

In developing standards to judge the enforceability of formally neutral, generally applicable laws against the mandates of the Free Exercise Clause, the Court has addressed

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