Introduction In today’s world, diversity and its maintenance have become one of the most severe concerns. In comparison to the previous centuries, people nowadays realize how important it is to respect such other people’s aspects as race, religion, gender, personal preferences, and boundaries. However, though, in terms of celebrating this diversity, some serious implications have appeared. Current governmental bodies feel the need to define the universal mechanism on how to cope with this variety so that no one’s right and freedom is violated. Religion has remained one of the biggest concerns for the past decades. The First Amendment to the US Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” (Levy 1). This statement has become the topic of continuous discussion because people try to realize where the line between the actual religion expression and the law violation is. The most notorious court cases regarding the amendment are the cases of Sherbert v. Verner and Employment Division v. Smith. There is still an ongoing debate, whereas some people support the idea of free religious expression despite its impact on the legislative system, and others strongly neglect such a concept. The purpose of this paper is to dwell upon this debate considering both cases as well as to define which interpretation and view on freedom of religion are more reasonable. Sherbert v. Verner The Sherbert v. Varner court case was one of the first examples of how the physical exercise of religious views can outweigh the word of the law. In this case, a woman, whose religion could not allow her to work on Saturdays, was dismissed from work due to that issue (Pryor and Bailey 295). In a consequence of various examinations, the Supreme Court held that the woman’s exercise of religion exercise did not interfere with legal issues and that nobody could make her choose between religious and employment preferences. Employment Division v. Smith Another flagrant and complicated court case was the one concerning a man who worked as a drug counselor in Oregon. The man was a representative of the Native American church that expressed the idea of a possible connection with the Great Spirit through the use of peyote (Holland 12). As soon as Smith’s employers were informed about this situation, the man was dismissed. In the course of the investigation, the Supreme Court stated that as the peyote usage was prohibited by law on the whole state territory, there was no actual violation of the man’s exercise of religious freedom. Sherbert test With the rapid emergence of various allegations concerning the First Amendment to the US Constitution, the governmental representatives needed a kind of algorithm of case differentiation. They had to know how to define whether the case was a violation of a person’s exercise of free will or a breach of other laws prescribed in the Constitution. After the rush around the Sherbert v. Verner case, the US legislative system decided to apply to such cases the so-called “Sherbert test” (Holland 12). The main idea of this balancing test was to identify whether, in a specific example, the burden o