adherents believe their faith commands them to sacrifice animals. But the Court did not do so, instead deeming it sufficient that they had a sincere desire to sacrifice animals for religious reasons. See Lukumi, 508 U.S. at 531, 113 S.Ct. 2217. Additionally, if anything turned on whether a religious practice is “mandatory” or “optional,” courts would have to question “the validity of particular litigants’ interpretations of [their] creeds” and perhaps even adjudicate “controversies over religious authority or dogma,” tasks that are “not within the judicial ken.” Smith, 494 U.S. at 877, 887, 110 S.Ct. 1595 (internal quotation marks omitted); cf. Presbyterian Church in U.S. v. Mary Elizabeth Hull Mem’l Presbyterian Church, 393 U.S. 440, 449-50, 89 S.Ct. 601, 21 L.Ed.2d 658 (1969) (<HOLDING>); see also United States v. Ballard, 322 U.S.
holding that courts can adjudicate property disputes as well as exercise jurisdiction over the narrow issue of whether bylaws of the church were properly adopted holding that members of a church congregation lacked sufficient interest to support intervention in an action by the church itself challenging the designation of the church as a landmark holding that denial of tax exemption for part of church property that was not necessary for occupancy and enjoyment of church did not violate first amendment holding the application of agediscrimination law in the ministers lawsuit against his church violative of the free exercise clause holding that the free exercise clause prohibits courts from deciding church property disputes by resolving underlying conflicts over the interpretation of particular church doctrines and the importance of those doctrines to the religion