EBENSBURG, Pa. (Reuters) - A strict Amish community in rural Pennsylvania faces a courtroom showdown over religious freedom because of its refusal to hang red reflective safety triangles on their slow-moving horse-drawn buggies, officials said on Tuesday.
The 80-member group of Schwartzentruber Amish holds that the safety triangles, which have been embraced by more lenient sects including the leading Old Order Amish community in Lancaster, represent faith in man-made symbols instead of God.
For that reason, religious elders refuse to sanction the payment of less than $90 in fines for 24 traffic citations.
Now the community is caught up in a trial in the mainly Roman Catholic Allegheny mountain town of Ebensburg, Pennsylvania, for alleged violations of a highway safety law requiring reflective triangles on vehicles that travel below 25 mph. A judge's verdict is expected May 23 after several hours of state testimony.
State authorities say the issue is simply one of public safety. "This is an area with a lot of hills and twisting roads, where there's heavy snow in winter and fog all year round, and there are near misses every day," assistant Cambria County District Attorney Heath Long told Reuters.
But the American Civil Liberties Union, which offered the community legal counsel after an Amish man went to jail rather than comply with the law, views the case as a violation of the community's religious freedom. Thanks to the ACLU, the Amish are being represented by a powerful Pittsburgh law firm.
"We're prepared to go as far as we need to go to vindicate our client's right to religious worship," said Wit Walczak, executive director of the ACLU's Pittsburgh office. "There's a possibility of going to the U.S. Supreme Court."
The Amish, descendants of Swiss and German Anabaptists who began settling in Pennsylvania as early as the 17th century, traditionally eschew modern technology as basic as electric lights and cars for lanterns and slow-moving black buggies.
The Schwartzentruber Amish, one of the strictest sects, moved in 1997 from more populous Ohio to rural Cambria County, about 65 miles east of Pittsburgh.
In Ohio, they were allowed to use less contentious gray reflective tape on buggies and horse-drawn farm-equipment that can move as slowly as 5 mph along country highways. The Amish hope to win a legal accommodation that would allow them to use the same reflective tape in Pennsylvania. Otherwise they say they may have to leave the state.
But Pennsylvania officials contend that red triangles, though less visible than reflective tape at night, provide better safety during daylight hours when most Amish travel.