Frankfort, USA - A lawyer for nine Western Kentucky Amish men said the constitutional right to religious liberty should protect their refusal to put state-mandated bright safety emblems on their horse-drawn buggies.
“This case is about the right of Kentuckians to freely exercise their religious beliefs and by necessity the limits of government's ability to impose a substantial burden on that right,” said William Sharp of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky.
But a justice on the Kentucky Court of Appeals quickly challenged that claim in a hearing on Thursday, saying the Amish men were putting not only themselves at risk, but children in cars whose drivers may not be able to avoid striking the dark, slow-moving buggies.
“We want to restrict governmental intrusion into our lives, but (not) when you start endangering other people,” said Judge Kelly Thompson. “There might be a baby in the car that hits that buggy. How do you justify putting that baby in danger to express your religious beliefs?”
Thompson and two other judges on a Court of Appeals panel heard oral arguments on Thursday morning in the case, which centers on a challenge to a decades-old state law requiring the placement of bright, orange-red safety triangles on certain slow-moving vehicles, such as horse-drawn buggies and farm equipment.
The nine men, from the strict Old Order Swartzentruber Amish sect, were convicted in Graves District Court in two separate trials of 2008 misdemeanor convictions for failing to display the triangles on their buggies. They were cited as they traveled the largely rural roadways in the Western Kentucky county, home to about 20 Swartzentruber families.
The Amish are members of a Christian group best known for modest dress, horse-based farming and transportation, pacifism, German dialect and close-knit, isolated communities. Most Amish branches are willing to comply with laws requiring the triangles.
But Sharp argued that for the Swartzentrubers, the requirement violates their modesty code and requires them to trust their safety in a manmade symbol — the bright triangle — rather than God.