Sherbert v. Verner (1963)
The Sabbath for Seventh-day Adventists begins on
Friday evening and lasts through Saturday, and the religion prohibits
work on the Sabbath. Seventh-day Adventist Adele Sherbert lost her job
for refusing to work on her Sabbath, but the state of South Carolina
refused her unemployment benefits because she would not accept available
work from other employers who also wanted her to work on Saturday. The
Supreme Court in Sherbert v. Verner invalidated the state's unemployment
benefits rule as an infringement on First Amendment rights of free
exercise of religion.
In Sherbert v. Verner, 374
U.S. 398 (1963), the Supreme Court ruled that government can restrict
the free exercise rights of individuals only if the regulations survive
strict scrutiny, placing a steep burden on state laws in such cases.Sherbert denied unemployment benefits after fired for not working Sabbath Saturday
Adele Sherbert, a Seventh-day Adventist, was discharged by her employer after she refused to work on Saturdays, the Sabbath in her religion. The state subsequently denied Sherbert unemployment benefits because she did not accept available work from three other employers who wanted her to work on Saturdays.Having lost in the lower courts, Sherbert appealed to the Supreme Court, contending that the law violated her free exercise of religion rights.
Supreme Court finds benefits denial violated free exercise of religion rights under First Amendment
In the opinion for the court, Justice William J. Brennan Jr. held that the denial of unemployment benefits to Sherbert imposed a burden on her free exercise rights under the First Amendment. Establishing a strict scrutiny standard, the Court held that the state’s assertion of administrative convenience — that is, that it would be easier to deny benefits to all than to ascertain which workers’ actions were sincere — neither met a compelling governmental interest nor the least restrictive means test.By allowing others a Sabbath on Sundays, but not Sherbert on Saturdays, the Court asserted that the state was forcing her to choose between her vocation and her religion. The justices were careful to note that by extending unemployment benefits to Sherbert, the state was not fostering a particular religion, but applying the unemployment legislation in a neutral manner in the “face of religious difference.”
In concurrence, Justice William O. Douglas argued that South Carolina law violated an important area of privacy that the free exercise clause was designed to protect and that the establishment clause was not at issue here. Justice Potter Stewart’s concurrence echoed Douglas’s stance on the establishment clause.
In dissent, Justice John Marshall Harlan II expressed concern that the Court’s decision favors religious over nonreligious claims for unemployment legislation.
Supreme Court later eases test for upholding laws in face of religious liberty claim
The Court would later modify the strict scrutiny test established by Sherbert in Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith (1990), where it applied the less-intrusive valid secular policy test, in which the state must show that a law alleged to affect free exercise is neutrally applied and serves a legitimate governmental interest.In response to Smith, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 in an effort to restore the Sherbert standard.
After Obergefell is Reynolds Still Good Law?
ReplyDeleteReynolds v. United States (1879)
George Reynolds was a party to Reynolds v. United States (1879), in which the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a federal law prohibiting polygamy did not violate the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. The Court’s decision was among the first to hold that the free exercise of religion is not absolute. (Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain)
In Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1879), the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a federal law prohibiting polygamy did not violate the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. The Court’s decision was among the first to hold that the free exercise of religion is not absolute.
Reynolds was sentenced for polygamy
The case began when George Reynolds, a resident of the Territory of Utah, was sentenced to two years at hard labor and assessed a $500 fine by a federal court for violating a federal anti-bigamy law. Congress had passed the statute against polygamy because it perceived that such a practice contravened good order and peace.
By practicing polygamy, Reynolds, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormon Church), was following what was then one of the central tenets of his religion. Appealing his case to the Supreme Court, Reynolds argued that the anti-bigamy law was in direct violation of the First Amendment’s free exercise clause.
Court said government could regulate actions that violated "police powers"
Although the Court agreed with Reynolds that the free exercise of religion underlay the founding of the United States, it also held that government officials have a right to regulate behavior as part of religious practices that are considered odious and violate basic notions of morality. Until the inception of the Mormon Church, the Court noted, the northern and western nations of Europe and every state had criminalized polygamy.
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The Supreme Court's ruling in 1879 that a federal law prohibiting polygamy was not a violation of religious liberty led to its important belief-action dichotomy for free exercise clause cases. A government can't interfere with a person's religious beliefs except when the religious practice violates certain notions of healthy, safety and morality. Polygamy continues to be prosecuted in the United States. In this photo, attorney Bill Morrison consults with four of his five clients, the wives of polygamist Tom Green, Thursday, June 29, 2000, in Nephi, Utah. Tom Green was convicted of four counts of bigamy and one count of child rape. (AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac, used with permission from The Associated Press.)
More important, the Court created a belief-action dichotomy for free exercise clause cases. It held that the federal government cannot interfere with a person’s religious beliefs, except when a religious practice violates certain notions of health, safety, and morality — commonly called police powers. Reynolds, therefore, had the freedom to believe in polygamy, but he could not practice it, because the action violated national police powers.
If the federal government could not regulate certain religious actions, the Court concluded, religious doctrines would become the superior law of the land. Indeed, in oft-cited language, Chief Justice Morrison Waite wrote: “To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances.”
Belief-action dichotomy has become a central principle of free exercise jurisprudence
Since this case, the belief-action dichotomy created by the Court in Reynolds has become a central principle of free exercise clause jurisprudence.