A New Chance for Oak Flat

SCOTUS to Consider Case on Apache’s Sacred Site on Friday

​The U.S. Supreme Court is set to consider reviewing Apache Stronghold v. United States on Friday. This is the last chance that the Apache have of preventing the utter destruction of land that to them is what Mount Sinai is for Jews and the Vatican is for Roman Catholics.
 
The federal government recognized in 1852 what anthropologists and historians confirm: that a section of the Tonto National Forest, known as Oak Flat, has for centuries been the place where the Apache go to worship the Creator. That is why the government recognized the right of the Apache to worship at Oak Flat in a treaty ever since.
 
As a result of a midnight deal in Congress, however, that land is being switched out with other public land elsewhere to which the Apache have no connection. A foreign mining company is set to dig a copper mine at Oak Flat that will be the length of the National Mall and as deep as two Washington Monuments.
 
Luke Goodrich of the Becket Law Firm told the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that the destruction of a people’s religious site would certainly qualify as a substantial burden under any meaning of the Religious Freedom Reformation Act. After the first of two denials by that court to grant relief to the Apache, Judge Marsha Berzon in a fiery dissent called that ruling “absurd,” “illogical,” “disingenuous,” and “incoherent.”
 
Ample precedent by this Court – from Little Sisters of the Poor to Hobby Lobby – ought to support the Court’s interest in this case. The current directive on Oak Flat threatens to impose one of the most drastic, and cruelest, burdens on religious practice in modern American history. That is why Protect The 1st has been joined by groups as diverse as the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and the Sikh Coalition in informing the courts of the danger of a negative ruling. We know that once the digging occurs, it will degrade the religious rights of all Americans.
 
Protect The 1st urges the Court to take up this important religious liberty case.

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