Tex. S. Ct. interprets Tex. Const.’s Religious Services Clause (enacted in 2021)
The Clause provides:
This state or a political subdivision of this state may not enact, adopt, or issue a statute, order, proclamation, decision, or rule that prohibits or limits religious services, including religious services conducted in churches, congregations, and places of worship, in this state by a religious organization established to support and serve the propagation of a sincerely held religious belief.
In Friday’s Perez v. City of San Antonio, the Texas Supreme Court concluded that this provision, when it applies, “is absolute and categorical, meaning it forbids governmental prohibitions and limitations on religious services regardless of the government’s interest in that limitation or how tailored the limitation is to that interest.” It also concluded that it’s a substantive protection, not just an antidiscrimination rule that bars “orders that treated religious services less favorably than secular activities.” And it concluded that “the Clause protects not only the right to gather for religious services but also worship practices that are part of religious services.”
But the court also concluded that the provision is limited in scope, in relevant part reasoning:
[T]he Clause protects only “religious services”; it does not, for example, purport to protect the broader concept of the “free exercise of religion.” … [I]t [also] protects only religious services “conducted … in this state by a religious organization established to support and serve the propagation of a sincerely held religious belief.” And … it forbids only government actions that “prohibit[] or limit[]” such services….
Because the Clause supplements and does not supplant the protections already provided by th
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