Employment Division v. Smith

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1990 United States Supreme Court case

Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), is a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court , where the Court held that the state could deny unemployment benefits to a person fired for violating a state prohibition on the use of peyote even though the use of the drug was part of a religious ritual. Although states have the power to accommodate otherwise illegal acts performed in pursuit of religious beliefs, they are not required to do so.

In 1993, in response to the ruling, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act , which aimed to apply strict scrutiny to laws restricting religious freedom, reinstating the Sherbert Test .

Facts

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Alfred Leo Smith and Galen Black were members of the Native American Church and counselors at a private drug rehabilitation clinic. They were fired because they had ingested peyote , a powerful entheogen , as part of religious ceremonies at the Native American Church. At the time, intentional possession of peyote was a crime under Oregon law without an affirmative defense for religious use. The counselors filed a claim for unemployment compensation with the Employment Division of the Oregon Department of Human Resources , but the claim was denied because the reason for their dismissal was deemed work-related "misconduct". The Oregon Court of Appeals reversed that ruling, holding that denying them unemployment benefits for their religious use of peyote violated their right to exercise their religion. The Oregon Supreme Court agreed, although it relied not on the fact that peyote use was a crime but on the fact that the state's justification for withholding the benefits—preserving the "financial integrity" of the workers' compensation fund—was outweighed by the burden imposed on the employees' exercise of their religion. The state appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, again arguing that denying the unemployment benefits was proper because possession of peyote was a crime.

The U.S. Supreme Court let stand the Oregon Supreme Court's judgment regarding Smith and Black and returned the case to the Oregon courts to determine whether or not sacramental use of illegal drugs violated Oregon's state drug laws (485 U.S. 660 (1988)). On remand, the Oregon Supreme Court concluded that while Oregon drug law prohibited the consumption of illegal drugs for sacramental religious uses, this prohibition violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment . The state asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review this second decision of the Oregon Supreme Court, and it agreed to do so. In earlier rulings like _Sherbert v. Verner _ (1963), the Court had decided that the government could not condition access to unemployment insurance or other benefits on an individual's willingness to give up conduct required by their religion. But the Supreme Court did not find that this principle also applied when the conduct in question is justifiably prohibited by law.

Of particular importance was that the Oregon law was not directed at the Native Americans' religious practice specifically; thus, it was deemed constitutional when applied to all citizens:

It is a permissible reading of the [free exercise clause]...to say that if prohibiting the exercise of religion is not the object of the [law] but merely the incidental effect of a generally applicable and otherwise valid provision, the First Amendment has not been offended.... To make an individual's obligation to obey such a law contingent upon the law's coincidence with his religious beliefs, except where the State's interest is "compelling "–permitting him, by virtue of his beliefs, "to become a law unto himself,"–contradicts both constitutional tradition and common sense. To adopt a true "compelling interest" requirement for laws that affect religious practice would lead towards anarchy.

Majority opinion

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The majority opinion was delivered by Justice Antonin Scalia . The First Amendment forbids government from prohibiting the "free exercise" of religion. This means that government may not regulate beliefs as such, either by compelling certain beliefs or forbidding them. Religious belief frequently entails the performance of physical acts—assembling for worship, consumption of bread and wine, abstaining from certain foods or behaviors. Government could no more ban the performance of these physical acts when engaged in for religious reasons than it could ban the religious beliefs that compel those actions in the first place. "It would doubtless be unconstitutional, for example, to ban the casting of statues that are to be used for worship purposes or to prohibit bowing down before a golden calf."

But Oregon's ban on the possession of peyote is not a law specifically aimed at a physical act engaged in for a religious reason. Rather, it is a law that applies to everyone who might possess peyote, for whatever reason—a "neutral law of general applicability". Scalia characterized the employees' argument as an attempt to use their religious motivation to use peyote in order to place themselves beyond the reach of Oregon's neutral, generally applicable ban on possession of peyote. The Court held that the First Amendment's protection of the "free exercise" of religion does not allow a person to use a religious motivation as a reason not to obey such generally applicable laws. Citing _Reynolds v. United States _ (1878), Scalia 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." Thus, the Court had held that religious beliefs did not excuse people from complying with laws forbidding polygamy, child labor laws, Sunday closing laws, laws requiring citizens to register for Selective Service , or laws requiring the payment of Social Security taxes.

By contrast, the cases in which the Court had allowed a religious motivation to exempt a person from a neutral, generally applicable law involved the assertion of both the right of free exercise along with some other right. Thus, religious publishers are exempt from a law requiring them to obtain a license if that license may be denied to any publisher the government deems nonreligious. The government may not tax religious solicitors. The government may not require the Amish to send their children to school because their religion demands otherwise, and Amish parents, like all parents, have the right to direct the education of their children. Because Smith and Black were not asserting a hybrid right, they could not claim a religious exemption under the First Amendment from Oregon's ban on peyote.

Smith and Black had argued that, at the very least, the Court should uphold Oregon's ban on peyote as applied to them only if Oregon had a compelling interest in prohibiting their religious use of peyote. The Court had invalidated three other unemployment compensation restrictions under this standard. But those other restrictions themselves required consideration of individualized circumstances, such as when unemployment compensation was denied to a person who could not, for religious reasons, work on Saturdays. If a state has in place a system of individualized consideration, the constitution does not allow the state to refuse to extend that system to cases of religious hardship without a compelling reason.

The difference between the other unemployment cases the Court had decided and this case was that Oregon's ban on peyote applied to everyone equally—in other words, it made no room for individualized consideration of the reasons a person might want to use peyote.

The "compelling government interest" requirement seems benign, because it is familiar from other fields. But using it as the standard that must be met before the government may accord different treatment on the basis of race, see, e.g., _Palmore v. Sidoti _, or before the government may regulate the content of speech, see, e.g., Sable Communications of California v. FCC, is not remotely comparable to using it for the purpose asserted here. What it produces in those other fields -- equality of treatment, and an unrestricted flow of contending speech -- are constitutional norms; what it would produce here -- a private right to ignore generally applicable laws -- is a constitutional anomaly. ....The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind -- ranging from compulsory military service to the payment of taxes to health and safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws; to social welfare legislation such as minimum wage laws, child labor laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental protection laws, and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the races.

Rather than interpret the First Amendment to require the exemption that Smith and Black sought , the Court encouraged them to seek redress from the legislatur

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