In United States v. Safehouse, (ED PA, April 3, 2024), a Pennsylvania federal district court held that neither the Religious Freedom Restoration Act nor the Free Exercise Clause of the 1st Amendment is violated by prosecuting Safehouse for violating 21 USC §856 (Maintaining Drug-Involved Premises). Safehouse is a nonprofit corporation that plans to open a safe injection site for those struggling with opioid abuse. Its founders were religiously motivated, but the corporation's articles do not set out any religious purpose. The court said in part:
Here, the organizers and leaders of Safehouse profess religious motivation, but the work of Safehouse itself is in no respect religious....
As an entity unaffiliated with any specific faith or religious institution, Safehouse claims protection for its non-religious actions, based solely upon the religious motivation of its founders. Neither RFRA nor the free exercise clause extends that far, as religion cannot provide a “limitless excuse for avoiding all unwanted obligations.” ... That is necessarily so, because “‘the very concept of ordered liberty precludes allowing’ [a plaintiff], or any other person, a blanket privilege ‘to make his own standards on matters of conduct in which society as a whole has important interests.’”... The noble intentions of Safehouse and its founders are self-evident, and the public health crisis they seek to address continues unabated, but their religious inspiration does not provide a shield against prosecution for violation of a federal criminal statute barring its operation.
WHYY News reports on the decision.
