Employment Division v. Smith

Employment Division v. Smith was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that fundamentally altered Free Exercise Clause jurisprudence. The case centered on two members of the Native American Church who were denied unemployment benefits after being fired for using peyote in a religious ceremony. The Court's ruling established that neutral, generally applicable laws do not violate the First Amendment even if they incidentally burden religious practice.

Background

The respondents, Alfred Smith and Galen Black, were counselors at a private drug rehabilitation organization in Oregon. Both were members of the Native American Church, which uses peyote as a sacrament in its religious ceremonies. They were fired for this sacramental use and subsequently denied unemployment benefits by the state's Employment Division. The Oregon Supreme Court initially ruled in their favor, citing the precedent set in Sherbert v. Verner, which required states to demonstrate a compelling interest when laws substantially burden religious exercise. The state agency, the Employment Division, appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which vacated the judgment and remanded the case for a determination on whether sacramental peyote use violated Oregon state law. After the Oregon Supreme Court confirmed the practice was illegal, the case returned to Washington, D.C..

Supreme Court decision

In a 6–3 decision authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court ruled against Smith and Black. The majority opinion held that the Free Exercise Clause does not permit individuals to defy neutral laws of general applicability. Scalia argued that creating religious exemptions for every such law would "make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land." The Court explicitly declined to apply the strict scrutiny test from Sherbert v. Verner, which had governed such claims for decades. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor concurred in the judgment but wrote separately to argue that the Sherbert test should have been applied and satisfied in this instance. The dissent, authored by Justice Harry Blackmun and joined by Justices William J. Brennan Jr. and Thurgood Marshall, contended that Oregon's interest in banning peyote was not compelling enough to justify the severe burden on the respondents' religious liberty.

Legal analysis

The decision marked a dramatic departure from prior Free Exercise Clause doctrine. Before this ruling, courts typically applied the Sherbert test, a form of strict scrutiny requiring the government to prove a compelling interest achieved by the least restrictive means. The new standard announced by Justice Scalia held that if a law is neutral and generally applicable—not targeting a specific religious practice—no First Amendment violation occurs, regardless of the burden. This significantly lowered the level of constitutional protection for religious exercise against incidental burdens imposed by criminal statutes or regulatory schemes. Legal scholars noted the opinion relied heavily on earlier cases like Reynolds v. United States and Minersville School District v. Gobitis.

Impact and legacy

The ruling generated immediate and widespread controversy across the political and religious spectrum. It was criticized by groups ranging from the American Civil Liberties Union to the National Association of Evangelicals, who argued it eroded a fundamental liberty. In direct response to the decision, a broad coalition lobbied Congress to pass legislation restoring the stricter legal standard. This effort culminated in the bipartisan Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which aimed to reinstate the compelling interest test for federal laws. However, in City of Boerne v. Flores, the Supreme Court of the United States struck down RFRA as applied to states, ruling it exceeded Congress's power under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Subsequent developments

The legal landscape continued to evolve after the initial ruling. Congress passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act in 2000 to protect religious exercise in specific contexts. Later Supreme Court decisions, such as Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah and Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, clarified that laws not neutral or generally applicable would still face strict scrutiny. More recently, in cases like Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, the Court has found ways to require the application of strict scrutiny by identifying particularized exemptions in generally applicable laws, but it has not explicitly overturned the core holding. The precedent remains a central, though contentious, pillar of modern First Amendment law.