Religious Freedom

Judge Sotomayor’s rulings in this area reflect an understanding of the First Amendment’s religious freedom protections and the proper role of courts.

In Ford v. McGinnis, 352 F.3d 582 (2d Cir. 2003), for example, a prison inmate brought a First Amendment challenge against corrections officials, alleging that their refusal to serve him a religious feast infringed his religious rights. The district court ruled against the inmate, relying on testimony by the Corrections Department’s religious authorities who argued that the inmate’s beliefs about the timing and significance of the feast did not comport with “Islam’s actual requirements.” Judge Sotomayor, writing for a unanimous panel, reversed. She recognized that “courts are particularly ill-suited” to “distinguish important from unimportant religious beliefs,” and accordingly ruled that the relevant question was whether the prisoner sincerely held the belief of the feast’s religious significance, rather than the objective validity of the religious belief. Judge Sotomayor showed a similar regard for the protection of the freedom to exercise religion in Campos v. Coughlin, 854 F. Supp. 194 (S.D.N.Y. 1994). There, prison inmates asserted a right to wear multiple strands of beads under their clothes as part of their practice of the Santeria religion. Judge Sotomayor upheld the claim, concluding that the state’s concerns about the outlines of the beads being visible from under the inmates’ clothing were not narrowly tailored to its acknowledged compelling interest in reducing the means of gang identification.

In Flamer v. City of White Plains, 841 F. Supp. 1365 (S.D.N.Y. 1993), a rabbi who had sought permission to display a menorah in a city park challenged a city council resolution barring fixed outdoor displays of religious or political symbols in parks. After a trial, Judge Sotomayor concluded that the rabbi should be allowed to display a menorah; the ban was an impermissible content-based regulation of speech, which was neither necessary nor narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling interest. In addition, she concluded that granting permission for fixed religious displays in city parks would not violate the Establishment Clause.

In Hankins v. Lyght, 441 F.3d 96 (2d Cir. 2006), a 70-year-old minister brought an age discrimination claim under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) after he was fired pursuant to his church’s mandatory retirement rules. The majority opinion held that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) amended the ADEA and remanded the case to the district court for reconsideration under RFRA. Judge Sotomayor dissented, arguing that RFRA did not apply to the dispute and that the majority opinion “violates a cardinal principle of judicial restraint by reaching unnecessarily the question of RFRA's constitutionality.” Judge Sotomayor explained that Second Circuit and Supreme Court precedent mandated that the ADEA did not apply in light of the law’s “ministerial exception,” saying that “[n]othing in the text, structure, or legislative history of the ADEA indicates an intention to extend its provisions to a religious body’s selection or dismissal of its ministers.” In addition, she cautioned against undue interference in religious matters drove her concerns: “Federal court entanglement in matters as fundamental as a religious institution’s selection or dismissal of its spiritual leaders risks an unconstitutional trespass on the most spiritually intimate grounds of a religious community’s existence.”

In sum, Judge Sotomayor’s record indicates that she recognizes the importance of religious freedom and the judiciary’s proper role in protecting that freedom.