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Sherbert v. Verner

From Ballotpedia
Unemployment insurance


Supreme Court of the United States
Sherbert v. Verner
Reference: 374 U.S. 398
Term: 1963
Important Dates
Argued: April 24, 1963
Decided: June 17, 1963
Outcome
Supreme Court of South Carolina reversed
Majority
Chief JusticeEarl Warren •Hugo Black •Tom Clark •William Brennan •Arthur Goldberg
Concurring
William Douglas •Potter Stewart
Dissenting
John Harlan II •Byron White

Sherbert v. Verner was a case decided on January 5, 1942, by theUnited States Supreme Court, which held that the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause required states to (1) demonstrate acompelling government interest in any law burdening a religious group and (2) demonstrate the law infringing on the group wasnarrowly tailored to accomplish the government's goal as unobtrusively as possible. The case concerned a South Carolina law referenced to deny Adeil Sherbert benefits under the joint federal-stateunemployment insurance program because she refused to work on Saturday in violation of her religious beliefs.[1][2][3]

The U.S. Supreme Court reversed theSupreme Court of South Carolina and held the denial of benefits imposed a significant burden on Sherbert's right to free religious exercise under theFirst andForteenth Amendments. According to the Supreme Court's opinion, the state failed to demonstrate a compelling interest to justify the burden.[1][2][3]

HIGHLIGHTS
  • The case: Adeil Sherbert, a Seventh-day Adventist, was fired for refusing to work on Saturdays. Sherbert filed forunemployment insurance, but her claim was denied because she was fired with cause. Sherbert filed a lawsuit against the South Carolina Employment Security Commission, claiming the denial of unemployment benefits infringed on her First Amendment right to religious expression incorporated to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
  • The issue: "Did the denial of unemployment compensation violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments?"[1]
  • The outcome: The Supreme Court held that the First Amendment, as incorporated to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, required South Carolina to pay unemployment benefits to Sherbert.


    • Why it matters: The Supreme Court's decision held that the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause required states to (1) demonstrate acompelling government interest in any law burdening a religious group and (2) demonstrate the law infringing on the group wasnarrowly tailored to accomplish the government's goal as unobtrusively as possible. The court's method for evaluating the dispute became known as theSherbert Test. InEmployment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith (1990), the court decided theSherbert Test was too broad for assessing laws of general applicability (that neutrally applied to all religious and non-religious individuals and groups alike).

    Background

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    Adeil Sherbert was a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Sherbert's employer fired her after she refused to work on Saturday. She applied for unemployment benefits, but the South Carolina Employment Security Commission determined her ineligible for payments under the South Carolina Unemployment Compensation Act (SCUCA). The commission alleged Sherbert's refusal to work on Saturday was not an adequate basis torefuse work under the SCUCA.[1][2][3]

    Sherbert filed suit, claiming the SCUCA, as applied, violated her right to free religious exercise under theFirst Amendment as applied to the states under theFourteenth Amendment. TheSouth Carolina Supreme Court upheld the commission's denial of benefits.[1][2][3]

    Oral argument

    Oral argument was held on April 24, 1963. The case was decided on June 17, 1963.[1][2]

    Decision

    The Supreme Court decided 7-2 that the state's denial of unemployment benefits to Sherbert imposed a significant burden on her right to free religious exercise under theFirst andForteenth Amendments. JusticeWilliam Brennan delivered the opinion of the court, joined by Chief JusticeEarl Warren and JusticesHugo Black,Tom Clark, andArthur Goldberg. JusticesWilliam Douglas andPotter Stewart concurred in separate opinions. JusticeJohn Harlan II, joined by JusticeByron White, delivered a dissenting opinion.[1][2]

    Opinions

    Opinion of the court

    JusticeWilliam Brennan, writing for the court, argued that the state imposed a significant burden on Sherbert's right to free religious exercise under theFirst andForteenth Amendments. He also held that South Carolina did not have a compelling interest to justify the burden.[2]

    “We turn first to the question whether the disqualification for benefits imposes any burden on the free exercise of appellant's religion. We think it is clear that it does. ...


    We must next consider whether some compelling state interest enforced in the eligibility provisions of the South Carolina statute justifies the substantial infringement of appellant's First Amendment right. It is basic that no showing merely of a rational relationship to some colorable state interest would suffice; in this highly sensitive constitutional area, "[o]nly the gravest abuses, endangering paramount interests, give occasion for permissible limitation," Thomas v. Collins, 323 U. S. 516, 323 U. S. 530. ...

    In the present case, no such justifications underlie the determination of the state court that appellant's religion makes her ineligible to receive benefits.[4]

    		”
    —JusticeWilliam Brennan, majority opinion inSherbert v. Verner[2]

    Brennen said that since the case was unconstitutional on the grounds of free religious exercise, the court did not need to examine the claim that the law violated the due process clause of theFourteenth Amendment:[2]

    “In view of the result we have reached under the First and Fourteenth Amendments' guarantee of free exercise of religion, we have no occasion to consider appellant's claim that the denial of benefits also deprived her of the equal protection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.[4]”
    —JusticeWilliam Brennan, majority opinion inSherbert v. Verner[2]

    Concurring opinions

    JusticeWilliam Douglas, concurring, said that a religious majority could not compel a member of a religious minority to abandon their religious beliefs or adopt the beliefs of the majority, even if the majority's rule had a secular purpose.

    “This case is resolvable not in terms of what an individual can demand of government, but solely in terms of what government may not do to an individual in violation of his religious scruples. The fact that government cannot exact from me a surrender of one iota of my religious scruples does not, of course, mean that I can demand of government a sum of money, the better to exercise them. For the Free Exercise Clause is written in terms of what the government cannot do to the individual, not in terms of what the individual can exact from the government.


    Those considerations, however, are not relevant here. If appellant is otherwise qualified for unemployment benefits, payments will be made to her not as a Seventhday Adventist, but as an unemployed worker.[4]

    		”
    —JusticeWilliam Douglas, concurring opinion inSherbert v. Verner[2]

    JusticePotter Stewart also wrote a concurring opinion, arguing that the precedence from similar previous cases was inconsistent with the ruling in theSherbert case. He said former precedence needed to be overturned.

    “I am convinced that no liberty is more essential to the continued vitality of the free society which our Constitution guarantees than is the religious liberty protected by the Free Exercise Clause explicit in the First Amendment and imbedded in the Fourteenth. And I regret that, on occasion, and specifically in Braunfeld v. Brown, supra, the Court has shown what has seemed to me a distressing insensitivity to the appropriate demands of this constitutional guarantee. By contrast, I think that the Court's approach to the Establishment Clause has, on occasion, and specifically in Engel, Schempp and Murray, been not only insensitive but positively wooden, and that the Court has accorded to the Establishment Clause a meaning which neither the words, the history, nor the intention of the authors of that specific constitutional provision even remotely suggests.


    But my views as to the correctness of the Court's decisions in these cases are beside the point here. The point is that the decisions are on the books. And the result is that there are many situations where legitimate claims under the Free Exercise Clause will run into head-on collision with the Court's insensitive and sterile construction of the Establishment Clause. [Footnote 3/2] The controversy now before us is clearly such a case.[4]

    		”
    —JusticeWilliam Douglas, concurring opinion inSherbert v. Verner[2]

    Dissenting opinions

    JusticeJohn Harlan II, writing the dissent, said that states rarely needed to establish special exemptions and accommodations for specific religious groups. He argued the decision overturned precedent from similar cases. Harlan also said South Carolina's unemployment eligibility rules did not directly or substantially impede Sherbert's free exercise of religion.[2]

    “For very much the same reasons, however, I cannot subscribe to the conclusion that the State is constitutionally compelled to carve out an exception to its general rule of eligibility in the present case. Those situations in which the Constitution may require special treatment on account of religion are, in my view, few and far between, and this view is amply supported by the course of constitutional litigation in this area. See, e.g., Braunfeld v. Brown, supra; Cleveland v. United States, 329 U. S. 14; Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U. S. 158; Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11; Reynolds v. United States, 98 U. S. 145. Such compulsion in the present case is particularly inappropriate in light of the indirect, remote, and insubstantial effect of the decision below on the exercise of appellant's religion and in light of the direct financial assistance to religion that today's decision requires.[4]”
    —JusticeJohn Harlan II, dissenting opinion inSherbert v. Verner[2]

    See also

    External links

    Footnotes

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