7 days ago
Religious freedom laws apply in drug injection site case, court says
CHICAGO, July 24 (Reuters) - An organization doesn't have to be founded with a religious purpose to claim protection under the country's laws governing the free exercise of religion, a U.S. appeals court said on Thursday in a ruling that applies the protections to nearly any group claiming to be practicing religion.
A unanimous three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the decision in a dispute involving a Philadelphia non-profit that has sought to open a supervised drug-injection site in the city.
The court gave Safehouse another chance to argue that it has a religious right to do its work after reversing a lower judge's ruling holding that Safehouse, which has said its work is informed by Judeo-Christian beliefs about the need to preserve life and care for the sick, is not protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Safehouse is fighting a long-running U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit seeking to bar it from opening the injection site. The 3rd Circuit panel sent the case back to the district court, directing it to reconsider Safehouse's claims after finding that it does qualify for the protection.
Representatives for the Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ronda Goldfein, an attorney for Safehouse, called the decision "an important milestone for all community-based organizations that save lives by evidence-based, compassionate harm-reduction strategies."
The fight between Safehouse and the federal government began in 2019, during Republican President Donald Trump's first administration. At the time, Safehouse was poised to open what would have been the first such safe-injection site in the country, where drug users under supervision by medically trained professionals could obtain clean syringes and inject themselves with heroin, fentanyl or other drugs. New York City instead in 2021 became the location of the first-safe injection sites, and the Justice Department has not pursued an action to close them. Safehouse has said it will open when it has legal permission.
The Justice Department argued Safehouse's plans would violate the Controlled Substances Act by maintaining a place that would facilitate illegal drug use. U.S. District Judge Gerald McHugh rejected that argument in 2020, but the 3rd Circuit reversed it a year later, saying that while the U.S. opioid epidemic "may call for innovative solutions, local innovations may not break federal law."
The case came back to the 3rd Circuit after McHugh dismissed Safehouse's claims that the threat of prosecution by the DOJ for violating federal drug laws was unconstitutionally chilling its ability to exercise its religious rights.
McHugh said Safehouse's articles of incorporation and tax filings said nothing about any religious activity, and while its website mentioned a religious motivation, it did not describe any apparent religious practices or behavior in its activities.
But whether Safehouse is a religious entity isn't the right question, the panel said. Under the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark religious rights ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, laws protecting the free expression of religion can apply to any corporations that claim to exercise religion, the court said.
The case is U.S. v. Safehouse, case number 24-2027 in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
For Safehouse: Ronda Goldfein and Adrian Lowe of the AIDS Law Project of Pennsylvania, Ilana Eisenstein and Ben Fabens-Lassen of DLA Piper, Peter Goldberger of the Law Office of Peter Goldberger and Seth Kreimer of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law
For the U.S.: Sarah Carroll and Lowell Sturgill, Jr. of the U.S. Department of Justice
