concluding that “inclusion of the phrase ‘in any case whatever’” in Article 1, Section 3 demonstrated “the framers’ and ratifiers’ intent to provide unrestrained protection for the articulated values”
How later courts described this case
- concluding that “inclusion of the phrase ‘in any case whatever’” in Article 1, Section 3 demonstrated “the framers’ and ratifiers’ intent to provide unrestrained protection for the articulated values”
- holding that Article I, Sections 2 and 3, "advance core values that restrain government interference with the practice of religious worship, both in private and in community with other persons"
- during a review of the history of religious liberties in Indiana, noting that “[t]he influx of settlers into Indiana reflected the whole range of religious belief and practice, and there was no religious unity from the beginning and denominations had no restraints” (internal quotations omitted)
- rejecting claim that the Court of Appeals of Indiana | Opinion 22A-PL-2938 | April 4, 2024 Page 50 of 76 exercise of religion as defined by the Indiana Constitution’s religious liberties provisions is limited to the “personal devotional aspect” of worship
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
SHEPARD, Chief Justice,
concurring and dissenting.
I join in Justice Dickson's opinion insofar as it remands for an evidentiary hearing on City Chapel's claim that its rights under the Indiana Constitution trump the eminent domain power of the City of South Bend (though whether they actually do so is a question for some future day).
As for City Chapel's claim under the First Amendment, I am satisfied that it does not constitute a "hybrid claim" of the sort envisioned by the brief passage quot *455 ed by Justice Dickson from Employment Div. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 881-82 , 110 S.Ct. 1595 , 108 LEd.2d 876. Largely, I think Judge Walter Stapleton was right when he observed for the Third Circuit that assembling for purposes of worship is a derivative of free exercise of religion and, as a corporate exercise, not entitled to a greater level of First Amendment protection than individual exercise might command. Salvation Army v. Dept. of Community Affairs, 919 F.2d 188, 199 (3rd Cir.1990). I thus conclude that City Chapel loses on its First Amendment claim, though for reasons different from the ones identified by Justices Sullivan and Boehm.