Court Lets Amish Reject Buggy Emblems

The Minnesota Supreme Court on Friday dismissed traffic citations against 14 Amish who had refused to display safety emblems on their horse-drawn buggies as required by state law.

Members of Minnesota’s Amish community have a constitutional right to refuse to affix the orange-red slow-moving-vehicle emblems to their buggies, the court ruled unanimously.

“These appellants . . . are unwilling to compromise their belief that the ‘loud’ colors required and the ‘worldly symbols’ the triangular shape represents to them conflict with the admonitions found in Apostle Paul’s epistles,” Associate Justice Glenn Kelley wrote. “To them, to do so would be putting their faith in ‘worldly symbols’ rather than in God.”

Between February and September of last year each of the defendants received a traffic citation for operating a horse-drawn buggy on a public highway without displaying the emblem or an alternative black triangular emblem that the law permits in cases such as theirs.

In December, Fillmore County District Judge Clement H. Snyder rejected the Amish contention that the requirement violated their constitutional right to freely exercise their religious beliefs, but he asked that a higher state court review the matter.

Because some members of the Amish community do not object to complying with the law, Snyder held that the Amish did not have a collective, genuine, sincere religious belief on the issue.

He ruled also that, although application of the statute did infringe on the exercise of the religious belief of some of the Amish, the infringement was warranted by a compelling state interest--protecting the health, safety and welfare of all travelers on public highways.

In the decision released Friday, the Supreme Court agreed with the Amish defendants that the trial court had improperly determined that, to be sincere, a belief must be shared by a religious community as a whole.

The Supreme Court held also that the state has a legitimate interest in protecting the public, including the Amish, on its highways. But it ruled that even the option under the law for use of a black triangular sign was burdensome to the Amish religious beliefs.