The methods and findings of the original (1990) GBD Study have been widely published [ 18- 25], and have spawned numerous national disease burden exercises.
Congress recognized that "laws 'neutral' toward religion may burden religious exercise as surely as laws intended to interfere with religious exercise," and legislated "the compelling interest test" as the means for the courts to "strik[e] sensible balances between religious liberty and competing prior governmental interests". 42 U. S. C. §§2000bb(a)(2), (5).
To develop and validate a self-reporting questionnaire assessing the burden of exercise therapy for patients with chronic conditions.
Congress appears to agree, and last fall it passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which exempts religious groups from laws that excessively burden religious exercise.
WITH unanimity and astonishing speed -- 16 minutes elapsed from introduction to passage in the House of Representatives -- Congress has acted to exempt religious institutions from land-use rules that excessively burden religious exercise.
The entire regulatory landscape may be changing, however, as a result of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which exempts religious institutions from zoning rules that excessively burden religious exercise.
Justice Samuel Alito writes for the majority: "Since RFRA applies in these cases, we must decide whether the challenged [Department of Health and Human Services] regulations substantially burden the exercise of religion, and we hold that they do.
A conservative estimate based on a person who spends eight hours a day sleeping and 16 hours in normal activities, but one who does not add to the atmospheric burden by exercise, would thus come to about 456 liters of carbon dioxide a day, or 166,440 liters every 365 days.
Since holding in 1940 that the Free Exercise Clause applies to the States, see Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940), the Court repeatedly has stated that the Clause sets strict limits on the government's power to burden religious exercise, whether it is a law's object to do so or its unanticipated effect.
To exclude religion from a large and growing public square is to burden free exercise.
