Free Exercise Clause

Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

U.S. Supreme Court 1990 In Sherbert v. Verner, the Supreme Court had said that under some circumstances the government could not impose laws that burdened religion — even if that harm was incidental or accidental. This issue reappeared thanks to the case of a man named Al Smith, who was definitely no relation to the Catholic New York governor but had other remarkable connections to earlier themes in religious history. Smith was a Native American who had been sent to…

Sherbert v. Verner

January 21, 2019 Sacred Liberty

U.S. Supreme Court 1963 The Supreme Court’s first major twentieth-century religious liberty case involved Adele Sherbert, a textile worker in Beaumont Mills, South Carolina. The factory that employed her instituted a six-day workweek—Monday through Satur- day. But Sherbert was a Seventh-day Adventist, which teaches that the Sab- bath is Saturday (Exod. 31:15: “Six days may work be done; but in the seventh is the Sabbath of rest, holy to the Lord: whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, he…