Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1961

Braunfeld v. Brown

366 U.S. 599 | 81 S. Ct. 1144 | 6 L. Ed. 2d 563 | 1961 U.S. LEXIS 1059 | 17 Ohio Op. 2d 241

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Takeaway

In short, Braunfeld allowed a neutral Sunday-closing law to stand even though it placed substantial economic pressure on Orthodox Jewish merchants who observed Saturday as their Sabbath, because the Court viewed the burden as indirect and the law as serving secular goals.

Background

Pennsylvania’s 1959 Sunday-closing law made it a crime for retail merchants to sell specified goods, including clothing, furniture, housewares, appliances, hardware, jewelry, and toys, on Sunday. The appellants were Philadelphia merchants who sold clothing and home furnishings and therefore fell within the statute.

Each appellant was an Orthodox Jew. Their faith required them to close and refrain from work from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday. They had previously operated on Sundays to recover some of the business lost by observing the Saturday Sabbath. They alleged that forced Sunday closing would impose serious competitive and economic harm, and that Abraham Braunfeld would be unable to remain in business and would lose his capital investment.

The merchants sought an injunction against enforcement of the law. A properly convened three-judge federal district court dismissed the complaint, relying on Two Guys from Harrison-Allentown, Inc. v. McGinley, which had sustained the same Pennsylvania statute against Establishment Clause and equal-protection challenges. The Supreme Court affirmed.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether Pennsylvania’s Sunday-closing law was a law respecting an establishment of religion.

Holding

No. The Court treated that question as resolved against the appellants by Two Guys from Harrison-Allentown, Inc. v. McGinley.

Reasoning

The appellants presented no new basis for distinguishing their Establishment Clause claim from the challenge to the same Pennsylvania statute rejected in Two Guys. The Court therefore did not reconsider the question and adhered to its conclusion that the statute was not an unconstitutional establishment of religion.

Issue #2

Whether Pennsylvania’s Sunday-closing law denied Orthodox Jewish merchants equal protection of the laws.

Holding

No. The Court treated the equal-protection challenge as already rejected in Two Guys from Harrison-Allentown, Inc. v. McGinley.

Reasoning

Because the Court had already upheld this same statute against an equal-protection challenge, and because these appellants added nothing material to that claim, it found no equal-protection violation.

Issue #3

Whether applying the Sunday-closing law to Orthodox Jewish merchants who observe Saturday as their Sabbath violated the Free Exercise Clause.

Holding

No. The Warren plurality concluded that the neutral law pursued legitimate secular objectives and imposed only an indirect economic burden on religious observance; the judgment upholding the law was affirmed by a six-Justice majority.

Reasoning

The Court distinguished absolute freedom to hold religious beliefs from freedom to act on those beliefs. Government may not compel a creed, dictate worship, or punish the holding of religious views. But religiously motivated conduct may be regulated when it conflicts with important public interests and the regulation does not impermissibly target religion.

Pennsylvania did not prohibit the appellants from observing their Saturday Sabbath or make that observance a crime. Instead, the Sunday-closing law regulated the secular activity of retail sales. Its practical effect was to make the appellants’ religious observance more financially costly because they could not use Sunday business to offset Saturday losses.

The Court acknowledged that the burden could be substantial. Still, the merchants were not forced to abandon a religious practice on pain of criminal punishment. They could continue to observe the Sabbath while accepting an economic disadvantage, or pursue commercial work not requiring Saturday or Sunday labor. In the plurality’s view, that indirect economic pressure differed constitutionally from a law directly outlawing a religious practice.

A law that indirectly burdens religion would still be invalid if its purpose or effect were to impede religious observance or to discriminate invidiously among religions. But a generally applicable law advancing secular state goals could stand despite an incidental burden unless the State could accomplish its aims by means that did not impose that burden.

The Court accepted that a State may seek a common weekly day of rest, recreation, family time, and community tranquillity. A uniform day off could reduce commercial activity and give people a shared opportunity for rest and social life. The choice of Sunday, though historically connected to religious practice, was upheld as serving those secular objectives.

The appellants argued that Pennsylvania should exempt persons who sincerely observed a different Sabbath. The Court recognized that such exemptions might be wise policy and that several States used them, but held that the Constitution did not require Pennsylvania to adopt one. A religious exemption could undermine the State’s objective of a broadly shared day of quiet, make enforcement more difficult, create competitive advantages for exempt merchants, invite difficult inquiries into religious sincerity, and raise problems concerning religiously based hiring.

Concurrences

Justice Frankfurter

Reasoning

Justice Frankfurter, joined by Justice Harlan, agreed that the Free Exercise claim failed but did not rely on the Warren plurality’s inquiry into whether the State could have chosen a less burdensome alternative. He took a more restrained view of the judicial role in reviewing a generally applicable economic regulation that was not enacted to suppress religion.

In his view, the Constitution did not require courts to grant a religiously based exception whenever a neutral law imposed unequal economic consequences because of a person’s religious obligations. Pennsylvania could choose a uniform Sunday rest rule to serve secular social and economic purposes, even though that choice bore more heavily on merchants whose faith required a different Sabbath.

Dissents

Justice Brennan

Reasoning

Justice Brennan agreed that the appellants’ Establishment Clause and equal-protection claims failed, but he concluded that the Sunday-closing law substantially burdened their free exercise of religion. In his view, the law effectively required Orthodox Jewish merchants to choose between faithful Sabbath observance and the ability to compete economically and earn a livelihood.

He rejected the plurality’s distinction between direct and indirect burdens as constitutionally decisive. A burden that prevents a person from both practicing a faith and effectively pursuing a trade was, to him, a serious First Amendment injury, comparable in practical effect to a tax imposed on religious activity.

Justice Brennan maintained that First Amendment freedoms require more than ordinary rational-basis review. Pennsylvania therefore had to show a sufficiently weighty interest and had to justify why an exemption for sincere non-Sunday Sabbath observers would not adequately protect its interests.

The State’s asserted interest was not in ensuring that every person received a weekly day of rest, because Orthodox Jews already rested on Saturday. Rather, it was chiefly an interest in having everyone rest on the same day. Brennan regarded the administrative and competitive concerns raised against an exemption as speculative and inadequate to justify imposing such a serious burden on religious exercise. He would have reversed and remanded for trial on the Free Exercise claim.

Justice Stewart

Reasoning

Justice Stewart agreed substantially with Justice Brennan. He regarded the statute as forcing Orthodox Jewish merchants to choose between their religious faith and their economic survival, a choice he considered cruel and constitutionally impermissible.

In his view, the State could not justify that burden merely by invoking the convenience of a uniform Sunday rest day or what he called enforced Sunday togetherness. The law’s practical impact, he concluded, grossly violated the appellants’ right to free exercise of religion.

Justice Douglas

Reasoning

Justice Douglas adhered to his dissenting view in McGowan v. Maryland, issued the same day. He regarded compulsory Sunday-closing legislation as an unconstitutional establishment of religion because it enforced a day traditionally identified with Christian religious observance.

For Justice Douglas, the State could not cure that constitutional defect simply by describing Sunday laws in secular terms such as rest, recreation, or tranquillity. Their required preference for Sunday remained an impermissible governmental alignment with religion.