Lyng v Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association: Supreme Court Dissent

Lyng v Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association: Supreme Court Dissent

This document is the dissent (opposing) opinions in the 5-3 precedent setting court case: Lyng v Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Association.

"Because the Court today refuses even to acknowledge the constitutional injury respondents will suffer, and because this refusal essentially leaves Native Americans with absolutely no constitutional protection against perhaps the gravest threat to their religious practices, I dissent."

Justice Brennan, Justice Marshall, and Justice Blackmun

U.C. Davis Special Collections

Supreme Court of the United States

1988

21.59cm x 27.94cm

English

25 Pages

D-334 David Risling Papers
Folder 7281 Box 32

As the Forest Service's commissioned study, the Theodoratus Report, explains, for Native Americans religion is not a discrete sphere of activity separate from all others, and any attempt to isolate the religious aspects of Indian life "is in reality an exercise which forces Indian concepts into non-Indian categories." App. 110. Thus, for most Native Americans, "[t]he area of worship cannot be delinted from social, political, cultural and other aspects of Indian lifestyle."

"Given today's ruling, that freedom amounts to nothing more than the right to believe that their religion will be destroyed. The safeguarding of such a hollow freedom not only makes a mockery of the "'policy of the United States to protect and preserve for American Indians their inherent right of freedom to believe, express, .and exercise their traditional religions,'" ante at, 13 (quoting AIRFA), it fails utterly to accord with the dictates of the First Amendment. I dissent.