Campbell: Texas Supreme Court misguided on exorcism decision

You can’t smoke hallucinogens in a sacramental rite, the U.S. Supreme Court said in 1990, because using hallucinogens is illegal.

But in Texas you now can assault someone, call it a religious practice and have no legal repercussions for the damage, thanks to the Texas Supreme Court’s misguided view of the First Amendment.

The June 27 ruling in Pleasant Glade Assembly of God v. Laura Schubert doesn’t mention exorcism at all, but that’s essentially what the case is about. And the court has concluded by a 6-3 vote that holding church members legally responsible for harm caused by an exorcism would intrude into "a religious controversy" in violation of the First Amendment.

So what’s a victim to do?

Keep in mind that the opposing parties in the case dispute what actually happened at the Colleyville church back in June 1996, when Schubert was 17.

In her version, she was taking part in youth group activities when other church members restrained her during a spiritual frenzy over demons. She ended up with carpet burns, scrapes, bruises and lasting emotional trauma that led to a suicide attempt.

The church defendants argued at a 2002 trial in Fort Worth that Schubert was exaggerating what had happened and that her psychological issues predated the incident anyway.

Jurors didn’t get into whether the church members acted reasonably on any beliefs about demon possession or the laying of hands to cast them out.

Jurors only had to decide whether Schubert was entitled to damages for being hurt while held against her will. And they were persuaded by the evidence that she should receive $300,000, an amount cut to $178,000 by the 2nd Court of Appeals.

The Texas Supreme Court threw out the entire amount after rewriting the facts and misinterpreting the law.

In the majority opinion, Justice David Medina stated flatly that the case "was not about her physical injuries," even though Schubert claimed physical as well as psychic injuries.

She can’t collect damages for "intangible, psychological injury," he wrote, because that would have "an unconstitutional chilling effect by compelling the church to abandon core principles of its religious beliefs."

Problem with that reasoning is that she was suing over the trauma of an assault — during which she was kicking and screaming to be released — not over religious beliefs. It’s not as though she took offense at a sermon insisting that wives be submissive to their husbands or claimed she had nightmares after voluntarily being submerged in water during baptism.

Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson all but urged the Schuberts to take their case up to the next level.

"This sweeping immunity is inconsistent with United States Supreme Court precedent and extends far beyond the protections our Constitution affords religious conduct," he wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Paul Green and Phil Johnson. "The First Amendment guards religious liberty; it does not sanction intentional abuse in religion’s name."

In 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case involving sacramental peyote use that generally applicable laws can be enforced even if they unintentionally infringe on religious practices.

Critics of that decision argue that the government should have to prove that it has a compelling interest for restricting religious rights even with laws that apply to everyone.

But under either standard, it seems that assault in the name of religion would not be justified.

The First Amendment’s protections are designed to shield religious practices that might seem odd or even bizarre to outsiders. And every religion, my own included, has some of those.

But religious freedom can’t mean license to cause harm, even if it’s done to believers.

Consider this: What would happen if a young woman who was forced into teenage sex while part of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints sect were to sue over the harm caused to her? Would the Texas Supreme Court hold that the man involved and the FLDS have no legal responsibility for the consequences of promoting underage sex as a religious tenet?

Jefferson wrote that the court’s "overly broad holding not only conflicts with well-settled legal and constitutional principles, it will also prove to be dangerous in practice."

Even those who believe that government has no business meddling in religious doctrine can foresee the pitfalls.