Cite as: 521 U. S. 507 (1997)
Scalia, J., concurring in part
If the historic landmark on the hill in Boerne happened to be a museum or an art gallery owned by an atheist, it would not be eligible for an exemption from the city ordinances that forbid an enlargement of the structure. Because the landmark is owned by the Catholic Church, it is claimed that RFRA gives its owner a federal statutory entitlement to an exemption from a generally applicable, neutral civil law. Whether the Church would actually prevail under the statute or not, the statute has provided the Church with a legal weapon that no atheist or agnostic can obtain. This governmental preference for religion, as opposed to irreligion, is forbidden by the First Amendment. Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 52-55 (1985).
Justice Scalia, with whom Justice Stevens joins, concurring in part.
I write to respond briefly to the claim of Justice O’Connor's dissent (hereinafter the dissent) that historical materials support a result contrary to the one reached in Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872 (1990). See post, p. 544 (dissenting opinion). We held in Smith that the Constitution's Free Exercise Clause "does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a 'valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes).' " 494 U. S., at 879 (quoting United States v. Lee, 455 U. S. 252, 263, n. 3 (1982) (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment)). The material that the dissent claims is at odds with Smith either has little to say about the issue or is in fact more consistent with Smith than with the dissent's interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause. The dissent's extravagant claim that the historical record shows Smith to have been wrong should be compared with the assessment of the most prominent scholarly critic of Smith, who, after an extensive review of the historical record, was willing to venture no more than that "constitu-
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