Navajo Nation v. United States Forest Service, 535 F.3d 1058 (9th Cir. 2008) (en banc)

Navajo Nation v. United States Forest Service, 535 F.3d 1058, decided en banc by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 2008, is the primary legal text itself, the appellate ruling that using recycled wastewater to make artificial snow on the San Francisco Peaks, sacred to the Navajo and several other tribes, did not violate the Religious Freedom Restoration Act because it did not coerce the tribes to act against their beliefs or penalize their exercise of religion. Its strength is that it is the actual controlling appellate opinion on this specific dispute, so a claim about the legal reasoning or outcome can be checked against the Court's own words rather than a paraphrase, including the substantial dissent's opposing view of what counts as a substantial burden on religious exercise. Its limit is that the ruling settles the federal statutory question under RFRA, it does not itself describe the San Francisco Peaks' religious significance to the tribes in any depth, which a claim about that significance needs a different source to establish.