Employers find it easy to accommodate the religious practices of majority faiths, but the different practices of minority faiths require extra thought. Apparently, it's too much thought and effort for some employers because the same accommodations given to adherents of mainstream Christian churches are sometimes denied outright to even minority Christian churches, never mind non-Christians. The Supreme Court ruled in Sherbert v. Verner that adherents of minority faiths cannot be disadvantaged.
Background Information
This Supreme Court case became one of the seminal cases involving religious liberty, creating the Sherbert Test. Just as the "clear and present danger" test from Cantwell v. Connecticut structured decisions from 1940 until 1963, the Sherbert decision structured the court's responses to religious liberty claims until 1990 when the Lemon test was devised.
Adell Sherbert was an employee in the textile mills of South Carolina who was fired by her employer because she refused to work on Saturday, her faith's Sabbath.
Sherbert was a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist church which teaches that Saturday, not Sunday, is the proper day for the Christian sabbath. They base this teaching on two biblical ideas: first, that God rested on the seventh day after creation and so the pattern of resting one day is built into the very fabric of creation; second, the Fourth Commandment declares that people are to "remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy," thus creating a divine mandate for resting.
After failing in her attempts to get another job, she filed for unemployment compensation benefits. These were denied because the South Carolina Employment Security Commission found that her reason for refusing to accept 'suitable' work was not compelling. The Commission stated that it only provided unemployment benefits to people for whom work was not available, not to people who were unavailable to work.
Sherbert's claim that she was denied her right to freely exercise her religion was rejected by the lower courts.
Court Decision
With Justice Brennan writing the majority opinion, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Adell Sherbert's right to refuse to work on her Sabbath without also giving up her right to unemployment benefits.
According to the Court, there were three questions that needed to be considered:
- Does the government create an 'infringement' on a constitutional right to practice religion? That is, has governmental action somehow impaired, interfered with, or prevented a person's or group's exercise of religion? If not, then the case is over - the government has won. If the answer is yes, then the inquiry can move on.
- Does the government have a compelling state interest which justifies burdening the religious activity in question? The term "compelling" here means "very important" or "of the highest magnitude." According to the Court:
It is basic that no showing merely of a rational relationship to some colorable state interest would suffice; in this highly sensitive constitutional area, 'only the gravest abuses, endangering paramount interests, give occasion for permissible limitation'
If the answer to this is 'no,' then the government has lost. Otherwise, the inquiry can move on. - if a compelling interest does exist, are there any alternative means by which the government can achieve its goal and thus not burden religious action? If so, then the government has to use that alternate procedure and cease the oppression of religious action. Otherwise, the government has won the case.
In this case, the Supreme Court stopped with the second question and found that there was clearly an infringement on the woman's right to free exercise because she was placed in the position of having to choose between the benefits and her religious tenants. According to the Court:
To condition the availability of benefits upon this appellants's unwillingness to violate a cardinal principle of her religious faith effectively penalizes the free exercise of her constitutional liberties.
The State had no compelling reason for denying the woman benefits. The chance of fraudulent filings is not a serious enough concern to limit the free exercise rights of citizens. By allowing Seventh Day Adventists the same rights as people of other faiths, the Court was merely imposing neutrality rather than giving them special rights.
On the other hand, this decision did not mean that state governments can never restrict a person's ability to collect unemployment benefits:
Nor do we, by our Court Decision today, declare the existence of a constitutional right to unemployment benefits on the part of all persons whose religious convictions are the cause of their unemployment.
Significance
This Supreme Court decision forced states to acknowledge that some religious traditions impose unique needs upon citizens. Such recognition did not, however, constitute an endorsement of any of these religions or of any of their religious doctrines. This means that the government can reasonably accommodate people's religious beliefs.
