Marshfield, USA - Religious freedom can trump safety measures that are legally required for the general population.
The Clark County Sheriff's Department this year has recorded two accidents involving Amish buggies, which hold certain legal exemptions based on religious freedom.
State statute requires that any vehicle moving less than 25 miles per hour display a slow-moving vehicle sign, but in 1996, the state Supreme Court ruled that Amish were exempt because the state failed to prove that a slow-moving vehicle sign was the least restrictive alternative to ensuring traffic safety while satisfying their religious freedom.
A group of Old Order Amish in Clark County had sued the state, arguing that their religious convictions did not allow them to display the symbol because the fluorescent colors were too bright, it was a worldly symbol and they could not place more faith in a human symbol than in their God, according to the state Supreme Court's opinion.
But buggies still are bound by law.
They are required to display a red light to the rear, and when traveling a road, a buggy must remain on the shoulder or as far to the right as possible if no shoulder exists, said Maj. Dan Lonsdorf, director of transportation safety at the state Department of Transportation.
Safety belts are not required, he said. Neither are child safety restraint systems. State statutes require that motor vehicles have safety belts, but a buggy is not a motor vehicle.
Religious freedom creates legal exemptions in many situations, but an emergency could change the rules, said Gordon B. Baldwin, a constitutional law professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"It's very protected, but it's not absolute," he said.
Hypothetically speaking, Gordon said that if a massive disease spreads and the principle advised method to cure it was mass vaccination, public safety might trump religious freedom, perhaps for practitioners of Christian Science.
The law requires alternatives in clashes between safety and religious freedom, Baldwin said.
"It is an attempt to accommodate interest in protecting beliefs...with the importance of public safety," he said.