Free exercise clause
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The free exercise clause refers to personal protections stated or interpreted in the First Amendment that implicitly protect the rights of citizens to hold any religious beliefs and engage in religious rituals. The clause also protects an individual's actions that are based on religious beliefs.[1]
Text of the free exercise clause
The free exercise clause, together with the establishment clause, state the following:
| " | Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ... .[2] | ” |
Background
The free exercise clause and the establishment clause make up what scholars refer to as the religion clauses of the First Amendment. While the free exercise clause aims to protect individual rights concerning religious practice, the establishment clause seeks to prohibit the establishment of a national religion or the preference of one religion over another.
The First Amendment was drafted with the intention of its protections not being applied to the states. Because of this, state and local governments could implement religious restrictions otherwise protected by the free exercise clause at the federal level as long as there were no similar prohibitions against such restrictions outlined in their respective state constitutions. [1][3]
Incorporation of the free exercise clause
The U.S. Supreme Court held 9-0 in the 1940 case Cantwell v. Connecticut to incorporate the free exercise clause against state and local governments through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment—meaning that the clause’s associated protections at the federal level would also apply at the state and local levels.
Justice Owen Roberts, writing for a unanimous court, argued that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applied First Amendment religious protections to states and prohibited them from infringing on religious freedom.
| " | We hold that the statute, a construed and applied to the appellants, deprives them of their liberty without due process of law in contravention of the Fourteenth Amendment. The fundamental concept of liberty embodied in that Amendment embraces the liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment. The First Amendment declares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The Fourteenth Amendment has rendered the legislatures of the states as incompetent as Congress to enact such laws. The constitutional inhibition of legislation on the subject of religion has a double aspect. On the one hand, it forestalls compulsion by law of the acceptance of any creed or the practice of any form of worship. Freedom of conscience and freedom to adhere to such religious organization or form of worship as the individual may choose cannot be restricted by law. On the other hand, it safeguards the free exercise of the chosen form of religion. Thus, the Amendment embraces two concepts -- freedom to believe and freedom to act.[2] | ” |
| —Chief Justice Owen Roberts, concurring opinion in Cantwell v. Connecticut[3] | ||
The following U.S. Supreme Court cases concern the application of the free exercise clause:
- Hamilton v. Regents of the University of California
- Wisconsin v. Yoder
- Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith
- Sherbert v. Verner
- City of Boerne v. Flores
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Legal Information Institute, "Free Exercise Clause," accessed October 3, 2022
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Justia, "Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296 (1940)," accessed June 15, 2022
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