Quite An Unusual Holding

As it turns out, using reclaimed sewage water for snowmaking in a Federally-licensed ski resort violates the Free Exercise Clause.

Umm, the Free Exercise Clause? The one about religion? That’s a rather surprising conclusion to me; I didn’t know there were religions that could not be practiced in the presence of mildly icky environmental decisions and the religions in question appear to be Native American beliefs of some kind or another, since one of the parties to the lawsuit is the Navajo Nation.

So I’ll read the opinion in more detail later and figure out why that might be the case. It may make an interesting footnote to my upcoming class discussing environmental law.