Caseflicks

Supreme Court of the United States • 1990

Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith

494 U.S. 872 | 110 S. Ct. 1595 | 108 L. Ed. 2d 876 | 1990 U.S. LEXIS 2021 | 58 U.S.L.W. 4433

Full access

Unlock the video and quiz

The written brief is free to read below. Subscribe to watch the video explainer and take the quiz.

Create an account Log in

Takeaway

In short, Smith held that the Free Exercise Clause generally does not require religious exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws, leaving most accommodations to the political process rather than constitutional strict scrutiny.

Background

Alfred Smith and Galen Black, members of the Native American Church, were fired by a private drug-rehabilitation organization after they ingested peyote as a sacrament during a church ceremony. Oregon classified peyote as a Schedule I controlled substance and generally made its knowing possession a felony, without an express exemption for sacramental use.

When Smith and Black sought unemployment compensation, Oregon denied benefits on the ground that their discharge resulted from work-related misconduct. The Oregon Court of Appeals reversed, and the Oregon Supreme Court held that denying benefits burdened their religious practice under Sherbert v. Verner and Thomas v. Review Board.

In an earlier Supreme Court decision, the Court vacated and remanded because Oregon's highest court had not determined whether state law actually prohibited religious peyote use. On remand, the Oregon Supreme Court held that Oregon's controlled-substances statute did prohibit sacramental peyote use, but concluded that the Free Exercise Clause required an exemption. The Supreme Court again granted review.

Issues

Issue #1

Whether the Free Exercise Clause requires Oregon to exempt religiously motivated peyote use from its neutral, generally applicable criminal prohibition on possession of peyote.

Holding

No. The Free Exercise Clause does not require a religious exemption from a valid, neutral law of general applicability that incidentally burdens religious conduct.

Reasoning

The Free Exercise Clause absolutely protects religious belief and profession. Government may not regulate beliefs as such, compel religious affirmations, punish religious doctrine, impose disabilities because of religious status, or take sides in disputes over religious authority. Religious exercise also includes conduct, but the Constitution does not necessarily treat every incidental burden on religiously motivated conduct as a prohibition of free exercise.

Oregon's law did not single out the Native American Church, religious peyote use, or religious belief. It prohibited possession of peyote by everyone. A generally applicable law may have consequences for religious conduct without having the object of suppressing religion, just as generally applicable tax or antitrust laws may incidentally burden press activity without thereby violating the First Amendment.

The Court read its precedents as consistently rejecting a general constitutional right to disobey neutral laws because of religious conviction. Reynolds rejected a religious exemption from anti-polygamy laws; Prince allowed enforcement of child-labor laws against a religiously motivated parent; Braunfeld sustained Sunday-closing laws; Gillette sustained military-service obligations; and Lee sustained Social Security taxes against an Amish religious objection.

The cases in which the Court had invalidated application of general laws to religious conduct also involved another constitutional protection, such as speech, press, or parental rights. The Court described those as hybrid-rights cases. Smith and Black asserted a free-exercise claim alone, not a claim tied to communicative activity or parental authority.

Issue #2

Whether the compelling-interest test of Sherbert v. Verner applies to Oregon's generally applicable criminal prohibition of peyote possession.

Holding

No. Sherbert's compelling-interest analysis does not govern a challenge seeking a religious exemption from an across-the-board criminal prohibition of conduct.

Reasoning

Sherbert, Thomas, and Hobbie involved unemployment systems that made eligibility depend on individualized assessments, such as whether an applicant had refused work or left employment without good cause. Where the government has created a mechanism for individualized exemptions, it cannot deny an exemption for religious hardship without a compelling reason.

An across-the-board criminal ban on peyote is different. It does not invite officials to evaluate each person's reasons for possessing the drug. The Court therefore declined to extend Sherbert to compel exemptions from neutral criminal laws, even though earlier cases had sometimes discussed compelling interests in other settings.

Applying strict scrutiny to every religiously motivated departure from general law would require courts to weigh the importance of civil obligations against the significance of asserted religious practices. The Court considered that approach inconsistent with constitutional tradition and impractical in a religiously diverse society, because it could generate claims for exemptions from taxes, military service, health and safety laws, labor laws, and other civic duties.

Courts also may not resolve this problem by asking whether a practice is central to a religion. Determining the importance or validity of a religious practice is outside judicial competence. The Court concluded that accommodations for religious practices may be desirable and legislatures may enact them, but the Free Exercise Clause does not constitutionally require them in this setting.

Issue #3

Whether Oregon could deny unemployment compensation to Smith and Black because they were discharged for sacramental peyote use prohibited by Oregon law.

Holding

Yes. Because Oregon could constitutionally prohibit their peyote use, it could treat the resulting discharge as work-related misconduct and deny unemployment benefits.

Reasoning

The Court's earlier decision established that if Oregon could constitutionally prohibit the underlying peyote use, denying unemployment benefits imposed a lesser burden than criminal prohibition. The Oregon Supreme Court had now definitively held that state law prohibited sacramental peyote use.

Because the neutral criminal prohibition was constitutional under the Free Exercise Clause, Smith and Black had no federal constitutional right to use peyote in Oregon. Oregon therefore could deny benefits based on their dismissal for conduct that violated that law.

Concurrences

Justice O'Connor

Reasoning

Justice O'Connor agreed that the case was properly before the Court and agreed with the judgment for Oregon, but rejected the majority's new categorical rule. In her view, a law that forbids conduct required by sincere religious belief plainly burdens free exercise even if it applies generally and does not target religion. The First Amendment therefore requires the government to justify substantial burdens on religious conduct through a compelling interest pursued by narrowly tailored means.

She maintained that the Court's precedents, including Cantwell, Yoder, Sherbert, Thomas, Gillette, and Lee, supported case-by-case strict scrutiny rather than immunity for general criminal laws. The majority's characterization of some decisions as hybrid-rights cases did not erase their free-exercise reasoning, and the fact that religious claimants lost in several cases showed only that the governmental interest prevailed after scrutiny was applied.

Applying strict scrutiny herself, Justice O'Connor found that Oregon's law imposed a severe burden: members of the Native American Church had to choose between a central sacramental practice and criminal prosecution. But Oregon had a compelling interest in controlling possession and use of Schedule I drugs, and a religious exemption would, in her judgment, undermine the State's interest in uniformly preventing the harms and trafficking associated with controlled substances.

Federal and state exemptions for sacramental peyote did not compel Oregon to provide the same accommodation. A government may voluntarily accommodate religion without the Constitution requiring every jurisdiction to do so. Thus, although she would preserve the compelling-interest framework, she concluded that Oregon could enforce its law and deny benefits.

Dissents

Justice Blackmun

Reasoning

Justice Blackmun, joined by Justices Brennan and Marshall, agreed with Justice O'Connor that the majority abandoned settled free-exercise doctrine. He argued that a law substantially burdening religious practice should survive only if the government proves both a compelling interest and that refusing the requested exemption is the least restrictive means of serving that interest. In his view, calling Cantwell and Yoder hybrid-rights cases mischaracterized precedents that treated free exercise as an independent constitutional liberty.

The relevant inquiry, he stressed, was not whether Oregon had a broad and compelling interest in combatting illegal drugs. It was whether Oregon had a compelling interest in refusing a narrowly defined exemption for sacramental peyote use by the Native American Church. Treating the State's broad anti-drug objective as dispositive would effectively predetermine the balancing against religious claimants.

Justice Blackmun found Oregon's justification unsupported by evidence. Oregon had not meaningfully prosecuted religious peyote users or demonstrated that peyote use in the Church's controlled ceremonial setting caused harm. The Church restricted peyote to ritual use, condemned nonreligious use, and promoted values such as sobriety and family responsibility that aligned with the State's interests.

The federal government and many States had long accommodated sacramental peyote use, suggesting that an exemption could coexist with drug-control interests. Peyote was not a significant object of illegal trafficking, and distribution remained regulated under federal and Texas law. Nor did the possibility of future claims justify denying this one; courts could assess whether different practices and substances would truly interfere with compelling governmental interests.

For members of the Native American Church, peyote was not merely a preference but the means of worship and communion with the divine. Denying an exemption thus threatened the survival of a minority religious practice. Because Oregon had not shown that enforcing its ban against these religious users was essential, Justice Blackmun would hold the criminal prohibition unconstitutional as applied and would require Oregon to provide unemployment benefits.