State faces ‘mark of the beast’ lawsuit

Amish farmer (photo: 'michelleBlack via Flickr.com)

Does it violate freedom of religion for the government to require that electronic markers be implanted in cows and other livestock? A group of Michigan farmers thinks it does and they’ve filed suit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Michigan Department of Agriculture (MDA) to prevent the requirement of electronic tags on their livestock.

The tagging procedure is being mandated to help the government track diseases in animals as they travel from farm to slaughterhouse to stores, but the farmers say that such a system violates their religious freedom because it represents the “mark of the beast” mentioned in the Book of Revelation in the Bible. The complaint says:

“Use of a numbering system for their premises and/or electronic numbering system for their animals constitutes some form of a ‘mark of the beast’ and/or represents an infringement of their ‘dominion over cattle and all living things’ in violation of their fundamental religious beliefs.”

The “mark of the beast” is, according to some interpretations of the Bible, a mark that all people will have to get during the “end times” predicted in Revelation.

The RFID tag system for livestock is part of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), which is being implemented in Michigan by the MDA. The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction against the implementation and enforcement of the law and are asking for a preliminary injunction to be issued immediately to prevent “irreparable, actual harm” to the plaintiffs’ rights and interests.

The plaintiffs are being represented by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, based in Falls Church, Va. Of the six plaintiffs in the case, all from Michigan, three are Amish. One is listed in the complaint as a Pentecostal minister, another is listed simply as an “ordained Reverend of the Christian Faith” and two are listed merely as Christians. All of them believe “that God and the Bible authorize [them] with dominion over all animals on the planet and prohibit [them] from taking the ‘mark’.”

The plaintiffs make several legal claims for relief, some statutory (which means they are arguing that the NAIS system violates the requirements set out in other federal or state laws) and some constitutional (which means they are arguing that the NAIS system is unconstitutional as written or enforced).

The statutory claims involve the Federal Administrative Procedure Act and the Regulatory Flexibility Act. The argument is essentially that the USDA did not follow the procedures required by those laws before implementing its program. In particular they are arguing that the USDA did not consider the impact of the NAIS on small independent farms and that the new rules “were never subjected to full and formal public comment and therefore constitute illegal rulemaking.”

They are also alleging that the NAIS violates the substantive due process requirement of the Fifth Amendment because the USDA “has failed to demonstrate that NAlS has any rational relationship to or causal link with animal disease control, USDA’s promulgation and implementation of NAlS pursuant to AHPA is arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and not in accord with applicable law.” Substantive due process is a controversial theory of interpretation in constitutional law but the Supreme Court has generally recognized it as valid.

The statutory and constitutional arguments involve highly complex and technical questions of how to interpret various state and federal statutes, but the plaintiffs are also arguing that even if the court finds that the NAIS does not violate either federal law or the Constitution, they should be granted an exemption from the law under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

RFRA is a federal law that gives courts the authority to grant exemptions from generally applicable laws that “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion” unless the government can show that the law is the least restrictive means of achieving a “compelling governmental interest.” The government will no doubt argue that there is a compelling interest in being able to track diseased livestock to the farms on which they originated in order to prevent further outbreaks of disease.