Appeals Court Cites Hobby Lobby, Religious Exception In Bald Eagle Feather Case
A long-running legal case over the possession of bald eagle feathers had a new development Wednesday when a federal appeals court ruled that the U.S. Interior Department had violated the religious freedom rights of a Native American tribe by confiscating their feathers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth District unanimously voted that the Interior Department had violated the religious freedom rights of the Lipan Apache Tribe when it confiscated bald eagle feathers belonging to tribe members in 2006. At the time, government officials confiscated the feathers because the Lipan Apache group was not a federally-recognized tribe.
In an attempt to protect the American bald eagle from extinction, the U.S. passed a law in 1940 that fined any person who possessed the feathers of bald eagles. Federally-recognized Native American tribes were an exception to the law, as collecting bald eagle feathers is a part of their traditional practices.
On Wednesday, the panel with the appeals court ruled that it was unnecessary to have a permit ban for "all but a select few" of Native American tribes.
"The very existence of a government-sanctioned exception to a regulatory scheme that is purported to be the least restrictive means can, in fact, demonstrate that other, less restrictive alternatives could exist," Judge Catharina Haynes wrote for the panel on Wednesday.
The panel cited the recent Supreme Court case regarding Hobby Lobby, in which the court ruled that the national craft store chain did not have to provide birth control health insurance coverage to its employees due to its religious beliefs.
Just as the high court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby because the federal government had already made exceptions for other religious employers, the panel ruled Wednesday that it had to prove that not allowing the Lipan Apache Tribe to possess feathers met a "high burden" requirement of the U.S. government.
