The Texas Supreme Court has sided with the City of San Antonio in a dispute involving a Native American church that worships at Brackenridge Park.
The case centers on the Lipan- Apache Native American Church, who consider a portion of Brackenridge Park a sacred place. The city’s planned improvements to the area included removing trees and bird habitat. The city has halted work where the ceremonies are held.
It began with a bond issue San Antonio voters approved in 2017. The bond included funds to refurbish part of the park, including renovating the old pump house and the elimination of some trees.
The trees are the nesting spaces of the large white cormorants in the Lambert Beach area, near the Brackenridge Conservancy’s headquarters building. Hundreds of the migratory birds nest there each year. The large, fetid mess they leave on the ground under them is considered a health hazard, particularly for children.
In its ruling the Texas Supreme Court said the Texas Constitution’s provisions do not extend to governmental actions for the preservation and management of public lands.
Gary Perez, a member of the Lipan-Apache Native American Church, said that “We are going to continue to pray for the best to keep the trees there, our spiritual ecology, the trees, the birds. We’ll just continue to pray all the way through and hope that God will intervene and soften some hearts.”
See here for some background. This was a federal religious liberties case that was heard by the Fifth Circuit, which initially affirmed a ruling in favor of the city of San Antonio but granted a rehearing after the state amended its constitution in 2021 that the plaintiffs said had bearing on their claim. The Fifth Circuit granted the motion for a rehearing but first referred the case to SCOTx for a ruling on the state constitutional matter, which is typical in this kind of case. And now we have it, and we’ll see what happens next. As I said before, I didn’t really lean one way or the other, I just thought this was an interesting case and I wanted to see how it turned out. Now I have it.