Stardate 20020130.0706

(On Screen): If any single person is perfectly free, then no other person can be free at all. As the old phrase goes, your right to swing your fist ends just shy of the tip of my nose.

The First Amendment grants us freedom of speech. But that doesn't extend to the right to scream "Fire!" in a crowded theater. We are not free to publicly advocate sedition, or to utter slander, or to use free speech to violate copyright. If any right is absolute, then no other right can exist. All rights have limits.

The First Amendment also grants us the right of free exercise of religion, but this too is subject to limits. It cannot, for example, be used to justify ritual murder.

The issue of limits to free exercise of religion has faced the courts many times. Peyote was used by certain Indian tribes in the south-west parts of the US as part of ceremonies, and they tried to claim that the drug laws couldn't be enforced against them for its use. (There were suddenly a lot of people "converting" to that religion while this was litigated; their dedication to the creed was definitely suspect.) The courts ruled against them.

The Mormon Church once taught that men should take multiple wives, but bigamy is still illegal in the US, and defenses based on free exercise of religion have never been permitted in such cases.

A Muslim woman in Florida wears the veil. That is her right; that is protected by the First Amendment. But she wants her driver's license photograph to be of her with her veil on. The State of Florida won't permit it, and insists that she bare her face for the camera.

This is a situation balancing free exercise of religion against the natural interest of the State of Florida in guaranteeing the safety of its citizens. If her driver's license shows a woman's face behind a veil, it could be used by any woman of about the same size who was willing to wear the veil temporarily. Especially in light of the terrorist attack, and the abuses which were revealed of the driver's license system in several states to get IDs for the men who made that attack, it is clear that easy access to false ID is a danger to the citizens of the state of Florida and the US overall.

I believe that she is wrong, and that she should not prevail in this. I do not think that anyone should force her to take off her veil in her everyday life; that is her right. But she can't demand that the state issue her a wild-card driver's license. That is where her free exercise rights end.