In recent years, advocacy around religious liberty has become closely associated with America’s religious right. For conservative Christians, standing up for freedom of religion often means defending bakers who don’t want to make cakes for queer weddings or business owners who don’t want to pay for contraception coverage.
For Scott Warren, a 37-year-old geography teacher from Ajo, Arizona, freedom of religion means making sure migrants crossing a treacherous stretch of desert along the U.S.-Mexico border don’t die of dehydration.
Last week, a federal judge acknowledged in a ruling that Warren has a legal right to put these religious beliefs into practice. Experts say the decision is one of the first times that progressive religious beliefs related to immigration have been protected this way ― highlighting the fact that conservative Christians don’t have a monopoly on the right to religious liberty.
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For the past two years, Warren has been fighting federal misdemeanor charges for leaving water, food and other supplies for migrants in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. Activists with No More Deaths, a Unitarian Universalist ministry that Warren volunteers for, say dozens of migrants have died crossing this stretch of desert along the border.
The U.S. government charged Warren for “abandonment of property” and for “operating a motor vehicle in a wilderness area” ― in other words, using a truck to carry humanitarian aid supplies into a remote, restricted area.
Last Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Raner Collins found Warren guilty of the vehicle charge, but importantly, acquitted him of the property charge. The judge argued that even though the government successfully proved that Warren did, in fact, abandon property in the wildlife refuge, the teacher’s humanitarian efforts are protected by his right to religious freedom.
“Defendant was obliged to leave water jugs because of his religious beliefs, and the Government’s regulation imposes a substantial burden on this exercise of his religion,” Collins wrote in his decision.
Source: Judge’s Ruling Shows Religious Freedom Isn’t Just For The Christian Right
