Similarly, the Court held in 1961 that the Free Exercise Clause did not exempt an orthodox Jewish merchant from Sunday closing laws, again citing Reynolds.
Though it recognized that governments may not “unduly infringe” religious exercise, the Court reiterated that “onduct remains subject to regulation for the protection of society,” citing Reynolds as authority. In 1940, for example, the Court extended the Clause-which by its terms constrains only the federal government-to limit state laws and other state actions that burden religious exercise. Reynolds influenced the meaning of the Free Exercise Clause well into the twentieth century. Doing so, Reynolds warned, “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.” The belief-action distinction ignored the Free Exercise Clause’s obvious protection of religious practice, but spoke to the concern that allowing believers to disobey laws that bind everyone else would undermine the value of a government of laws applied to all. Hundreds of church leaders were jailed, rank-and-file Mormons were deprived of their right to vote, and Congress dissolved the LDS Church and expropriated most of its property, until the church finally agreed to abandon polygamy. What followed was perhaps the most extreme government assault on religious freedom in American history. “Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices.” Reynolds v. The Court unanimously rejected free exercise challenges to these laws, holding that the Free Exercise Clause protects beliefs but not conduct.
Extreme desire for freedom series#
The Supreme Court first addressed the question in a series of cases involving nineteenth-century laws aimed at suppressing the practice of polygamy by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), also known as Mormons.
Early state court decisions went both ways on this central question. In drafting the Clause, Congress considered several formulations, but ultimately settled on protecting the “free exercise of religion.” This phrase makes plain the protection of actions as well as beliefs, but only those in some way connected to religion.įrom the beginning, courts in the United States have struggled to find a balance between the religious liberty of believers, who often claim the right to be excused or “exempted” from laws that interfere with their religious practices, and the interests of society reflected in those very laws. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.”Īlthough the original Constitution contained only a prohibition of religious tests for federal office (Article VI, Clause 3), the Free Exercise Clause was added as part of the First Amendment in 1791. James Madison, for example, the principal author of the First Amendment, eloquently expressed his support for such a provision in Virginia: “It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. By the time of Independence and the construction of a new Constitution, freedom of religion was among the most widely recognized “inalienable rights,” protected in some fashion by state bills of rights and judicial decisions. Although the colonists often understood freedom of religion more narrowly than we do today, support for protection of some conception of religious freedom was broad and deep. Many settlers from Europe braved the hardships of immigration to the American colonies to escape religious persecution in their home countries and to secure the freedom to worship according to their own conscience and conviction.
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