ST. PAUL, Minn. (CN) – A Minnesota Amish community that has bucked state rules requiring septic tanks can continue to go without them, the Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled Monday.
The decision is the latest in a series of victories for the Swartzentruber Amish community, an Amish community in Fillmore County, Minnesota, that has been at odds with state and county regulators over the tanks since 2017.
Back in 2017, Fillmore County took a series of administrative actions against members of the community for failing to process their graywater with septic systems — actions which several community members say infringed on their religious beliefs.
The Amish are known for their religious prohibitions on the use of many modern technologies, prohibitions that at least some in the Swartzentruber community argue extend to septic tanks.
Instead, members of the group sought permission from local and state authorities to use basins of mulch to filter graywater, a term for household wastewater that does not substantially include human waste. Minnesota environmental authorities have maintained that the mulch basins are inadequate to protect groundwater in the geologically-porous region of Southeastern Minnesota where the Swartzentruber community lives.
The Amish prevailed over the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and Fillmore County at the U.S. Supreme Court last summer, when the high court vacated a previous Court of Appeals decision. That prior decision — which agreed that the septic-system requirement infringed on the Amish’s religious rights — nonetheless found it was the least burdensome means for the regulators to protect groundwater in the area.
The Supreme Court’s ruling was brief, ordering the state court to consider its then-recent decision in Fulton v. Philadelphia, another major religious freedom case.
In concurrences, Justice Samuel Alito argued that lower courts had “plainly misinterpreted and misapplied the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act,” a 2000 religious-freedom law that, among other things, protects religious freedom in zoning requirements. Meanwhile, Justice Neil Gorsuch accused local authorities of displaying "precisely the sort of bureaucratic inflexibility RLUIPA was designed to prevent.”
The Minnesota Court of Appeals remanded the case to Fillmore County following that decision. However, when regulators once again won at lower court, the dispute returned again to the appeals court.
This time, in light of the precedents set in this and other related cases, Minnesota regulators had a high bar to meet in their efforts to require the wastewater-treatment tanks. They had to show not only that their governmental interest in household water quality was so compelling as to warrant infringement on the Amish’s religious rights, but also that requiring septic tanks was the least restrictive means of furthering that interest.
The evidence from the government, Judge Diane Bratvold wrote in Monday's decision, was too generalized and speculative to meet that threshold. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency told the court it could not obtain better information on the Amish community's water use because it lacked access to their properties — but nonetheless, that lack of clear testimony or data about Amish graywater proved fatal to the government's case. Arguments from regulators were "based on mere speculation," Bratvold wrote, handing the septic-averse Amish community yet another victory in court.
"I'm very pleased with the decision, and hoping that the government at last will be willing to work with the Amish community and stop prosecuting them," Brian Lipford, an attorney with Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services who represented the plaintiffs, said Monday afternoon. While the option was open for the government to appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court, Lipford said, he hoped for a more amicable solution and an end to the litigation. "It's been a long road."
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