Freedom of Religion Case Studies

Everson v. Board of Education (1947)  

When the Bill of Rights was first ratified, it only applied to the federal government. So, while the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment banned the federal government from establishing an official church, it did not ban state governments from doing so.

In the 1940s, New Jersey enacted a law that authorized local governments to reimburse parents of students for transportation to and from school. The law covered students at both public and private schools. A significant majority of private school students attended Catholic schools. A New Jersey resident sued his local board of education, arguing the funding of transportation was a form of indirect aid to religious schools that violated the Establishment Clause.

In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled in favor of the board of education. It determined the law was constitutional because transporting children to school had a “public purpose.” In addition, the Court decided to incorporate the Establishment Clause through the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, which would apply it to state and local governments. The Due Process Clause reads, “No state shall…deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” While the New Jersey law did not violate the First Amendment, the majority opinion determined the First Amendment did apply to the states. “The ‘establishment of religion’ clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church.”

The dissenting Justices agreed with the incorporation of the Establishment Clause but believed the policy was unconstitutional, as the language of the First Amendment, “law respecting an establishment of religion,” did more than merely prohibit an official “establishment.” The dissent insisted that the establishment clause prohibited public aid or support for religion. They feared the majority was creating a slippery slope that would eventually allow an establishment of religion. Justice Wiley Rutledge wrote in dissent, “The [First] Amendment’s purpose was not to strike merely at the official establishment of a single sect, creed or religion, outlawing only a formal relation such as had prevailed in England and some of the colonies. Necessarily, it was to uproot all such relationships. But the object was broader than separating church and state in this narrow sense. It was to create a complete and permanent separation of the spheres of religious activity and civil authority by comprehensively forbidding every form of public aid or support for religion.” The Everson case became an important precedent that influenced several subsequent religious liberty cases.

 

Engel v. Vitale (1961) 

In 1951, the Board of Regents of New York wrote a non-denominational prayer that read, “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country. Amen.” The Board authorized public school districts to read the prayer but did not require it. Additionally, students could voluntarily opt out of the prayer with parent approval. Parents of students from a district that did adopt the prayer sued the school board president, William Vitale, Jr. They argued that reading a school prayer violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

In a 6-1 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the parents. Justice Hugo Black wrote the majority opinion, stating, “the constitutional prohibition against laws respecting an establishment of religion must at least mean that in this country it is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people to recite as a part of a religious program carried out by government.” Justice Potter Stewart wrote the lone dissent, arguing, “we deal here not with the establishment of a state church, which would, of course, be constitutionally impermissible, but with whether school children who want to begin their day by joining in prayer must be prohibited from doing so.”

The decision was very controversial at the time. Detractors argued it undermined morality in the education system. Supporters argued it was a crucial decision for preventing entanglement between government and religion.

 

Employment Division v. Smith (1990)  

Alfred Smith was a member of the Native American Church and a counselor at a private drug rehabilitation center. As part of a religious ceremony, Smith ingested the psychedelic drug peyote, an illegal drug in Oregon. Smith’s employer fired him for possession of the drug, and when he filed for unemployment benefits, the state denied his claim because his firing was related to workplace misconduct. Smith sued the state, arguing that his inability to collect unemployment violated his religious freedom under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Oregon’s Employment Division and determined that its denial of unemployment benefits did not violate the First Amendment. Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority opinion, arguing that Oregon’s law against peyote was a neutral prohibition designed to apply to all residents and was not meant to target members of the Native American Church. Therefore, the state had a legitimate reason for denying unemployment benefits. He determined that permitting some people to ingest peyote for religious reasons “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.”

Justice Harry Blackmun dissented, arguing the Oregon law was unconstitutional as applied to Smith, because the Free Exercise clause entitled him to an exemption from this otherwise valid law. For the dissent, Smith’s ingestion of peyote as part of a religious ceremony was protected even if the law was otherwise valid. Blackman wrote, “The carefully circumscribed ritual context in which respondents used peyote is far removed from the irresponsible and unrestricted recreational use of unlawful drugs…I conclude that Oregon’s interest in enforcing its drug laws against religious use of peyote is not sufficiently compelling to outweigh respondents’ right to the free exercise of their religion. Since the State could not constitutionally enforce its criminal prohibition against respondents, the interests underlying the State’s drug laws cannot justify its denial of unemployment benefits.”

The ruling established that laws that incidentally burden the exercise of religion do not violate the Free Exercise Clause, so long as they are neutral and not motivated by hostility to that specific religion.