1 (Slip Opinion) OCTOBER TERM, 2020

Syllabus

NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader. See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321, 337. 

## SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Syllabus

FULTON ET AL

. v . CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, ET AL

.

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

No. 19–123. Argued November 4, 2020—Decided June 17, 2021
Philadelphia’s foster care system re lies on cooperation between the City

and private foster care agencies. The City enters standard annual con

tracts with the agencies to place ch ildren with foster families. One of the responsibilities of the agencies is certifying prospective foster fam

ilies under state statutory criteria. Pe titioner Catholic Social Services has contracted with the City to provid e foster care services for over 50 years, continuing the centuries-old mission of the Catholic Church to serve Philadelphia’s needy children. CSS holds the religious belief that marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman. Because CSS believes that certification of pros pective foster families is an en

dorsement of their relationships, it will not certify unmarried cou

ples—regardless of their sexual orientation—or same-sex married cou

ples. But other private foster ag encies in Philadelphia will certify same-sex couples, and no same-sex couple has sought certification from CSS. Against this backdrop, a 2018 newspaper story recounted the Archdiocese of Philadelphia’s posi tion that CSS could not consider prospective foster parents in same-s ex marriages. Calls for investiga

tion followed, and the City ultima tely informed CSS that unless it agreed to certify same-sex couples the City would no longer refer chil

dren to the agency or enter a full foster care contract with it in the future. The City explained that the refusal of CSS to certify same-sex married couples violated both a non-discrimination provision in the agency’s contract with the City as well as the non-discrimination re

quirements of the citywide Fa ir Practices Ordinance.

CSS and three affiliated foster pa rents filed suit seeking to enjoin the City’s referral freeze on the gro unds that the City’s actions violated the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment.2 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

Syllabus
The District Court denied preliminary relief. It reasoned that the con

tractual non-discrimination requir ement and the Fair Practices Ordi

nance were both neutral and generally applicable under Employment Div.

, Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith , 494 U. S. 872, and that CSS’s free exercise claim was therefore unlikely to succeed. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed. Given the expiration of the parties’ contract, the Third Circuit examined whether the City could condition contract renewal on the inclusion of new language for

bidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The court concluded that the City’s proposed contractual terms stated a neutral and generally applicable policy under Smith. CSS and the foster par

ents challenge the Third Circuit’s de termination that the City’s actions were permissible under Smith and also ask the Court to reconsider that decision

. Held : The refusal of Philadelphia to contract with CSS for the provision

of foster care services unless CSS agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents violates the Free Ex ercise Clause of the First Amend

ment. Pp. 4–15.

(a) The City’s actions burdened C SS’s religious exercise by forcing it either to curtail its mission or to ce rtify same-sex couples as foster par

ents in violation of its religious beliefs. Smith held that laws inci

dentally burdening religion are ordinar ily not subject to strict scrutiny under the Free Exercise Clause so long as they are both neutral and generally applicable. 494 U. S., at 878–882. This case falls outside Smith because the City has burdened C SS’s religious exercise through policies that do not satisfy the thre shold requirement of being neutral and generally applicable. Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc . v. Hia

leah , 508 U. S. 520, 531–532. A law is not generally applicable if it invites the government to consider the particular reasons for a person’s conduct by creating a mechanism for individualized exemptions. Smith , 494 U. S., at 884. Where such a system of individual exemp

tions exists, the government may not refuse to extend that system to cases of religious hardship without a compelling reason. Ibid. Pp. 4– 7. (1) The non-discrimination requ irement of the City’s standard fos

ter care contract is not generally applicable. Section 3.21 of the con

tract requires an agency to provide services defined in the contract to prospective foster parents without rega rd to their sexual orientation. But section 3.21 also permits except ions to this requirement at the “sole discretion” of the Commissioner . This inclusion of a mechanism for entirely discretionary exceptions renders the non-discrimination provision not generally applicable. Smith , 494 U. S., at 884. The City maintains that greater deference shou ld apply to its treatment of pri

vate contractors, but the result he re is the same under any level of3 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

Syllabus

deference. Similarly unavailing is th e City’s recent contention that section 3.21 does not even apply to CSS’s refusal to certify same-sex couples. That contention ignores th e broad sweep of section 3.21’s text, as well as the fact that the City adopted the current version of section 3.21 shortly after declaring that it would make CSS’s obligation to cer

tify same-sex couples “explicit” in future contracts. Finally, because state law makes clear that the City’s authority to grant exceptions from section 3.21 also governs section 15.1’s general prohibition on sex

ual orientation discrimination, the co ntract as a whole contains no gen

erally applicable non-discrimina tion requirement. Pp. 7–10. (2) Philadelphia’s Fair Practice s Ordinance, which as relevant for

bids interfering with the public accommodations opportunities of an individual based on sexual orientation, does not apply to CSS’s actions here. The Ordinance defines a public accommodation in relevant part to include a provider “whose goods, services, facilities, privileges, ad

vantages or accommodations are exte nded, offered, sold, or otherwise made available to the public.” Phila. Code §9–1102(1)(w). Certifica

tion is not “made available to the public” in the usual sense of the words. Certification as a foster pa rent is not readily accessible to the public; the process invo lves a customized and selective assessment that bears little resemblance to staying in a hotel, eating at a restau

rant, or riding a bus. The District Court’s contrary conclusion did not take into account the uniquely selective nature of foster care certifica

tion. Pp. 10–13. (b) The contractual non-discrimination requirement burdens CSS’s religious exercise and is not generally applicable, so it is subject to “the most rigorous of scrutiny.” Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 546. A government policy can survive strict scrutiny only if it advances compelling inter

ests and is narrowly tailored to achieve those interests. Ibid . The question is not whether the City ha s a compelling interest in enforcing its non-discrimination policies gene rally, but whether it has such an interest in denying an exception to CSS. Under the circumstances here, the City does not have a compelling interest in refusing to con

tract with CSS. CSS s eeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else. The refusal of Philadelphia to contract with CSS for the provision of foster care services unless the agency agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents cannot survive strict scrutiny and violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendm ent. The Court does not consider whether the City ’s actions also violate the Free Speech Clause. Pp. 13–15. 922 F. 3d. 140, reversed and remanded.4 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

Syllabus

R OBERTS , C. J., delivered the opinio n of the Court, in which B REYER , S OTOMAYOR , K AGAN , K AVANAUGH , and B ARRETT , JJ., joined. B ARRETT , J., filed a concurring opinion, in which K AVANAUGH , J., joined, and in which B REYER , J., joined as to all but the first paragraph. A LITO , J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which T HOMAS and G ORSUCH , JJ., joined. G ORSUCH , J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which T HOMAS and A LITO , JJ., joined._________________

_________________ 1 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

Opinion of the Court

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Wash

ington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other form al errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press. 

## SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 19–123

SHARONELL FULTON, ET AL ., PETITIONERS v. CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, ET AL

.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
[June 17, 2021]

C HIEF J USTICE R OBERTS delivered the opinion of the Court.
Catholic Social Services is a foster care agency in Phila

delphia. The City stopped re ferring children to CSS upon discovering that the agency would not certify same-sex cou

ples to be foster parents due to its religious beliefs about marriage. The City will renew its foster care contract with CSS only if the agency agrees to certify same-sex couples. The question presented is whether the actions of Philadel

phia violate the First Amendment.

I The Catholic Church has served the needy children of Philadelphia for over two centurie s. In 1798, a priest in the City organized an association to care for orphans whose parents had died in a yellow fever epidemic. H. Folks, The Care of Destitute, Neglected, and Delinquent Children 10 (1902). During the 19th century, nuns ran asylums for or

phaned and destitute youth. T. Hacsi, Second Home: Or

phan Asylums and Poor Families in America 24 (1997). When criticism of asylums mounted in the Progressive Era, see id. , at 37–40, the Church established the Catholic2 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

Opinion of the Court Children’s Bureau to place children in foster homes. Peti

tioner CSS continues that mission today. The Philadelphia foster care system depends on coopera

tion between the City and private foster agencies like CSS. When children cannot remain in their homes, the City’s Department of Human Services assumes custody of them. The Department enters standar d annual contracts with pri

vate foster agencies to place some of those children with foster families. The placement process begins with review of prospective foster families. Pennsylvania law gives the authority to cer

tify foster families to state- licensed foster agencies like CSS. 55 Pa. Code §3700.61 (2020). Before certifying a fam

ily, an agency must conduct a home study during which it considers statutory criteria incl uding the family’s “ability to provide care, nurturing and supervision to children,” “[e]xisting family relationships,” and ability “to work in partnership” with a foster agency. §3700.64. The agency must decide whether to “appro ve, disapprove or provision

ally approve the foster family.” §3700.69. When the Department seeks to place a child with a foster family, it sends its contracted agencies a request, known as a referral. The agencies repo rt whether any of their certi

fied families are available, and the Department places the child with what it regards as the most suitable family. The agency continues to support the family throughout the placement. The religious views of CSS inform its work in this system. CSS believes that “marriage is a sacred bond between a man and a woman.” App. 171. Because the agency under

stands the certification of prospective foster families to be an endorsement of their relationships, it will not certify un

married couples—regardless of their sexual orientation—or same-sex married couples. C SS does not object to certifying gay or lesbian individuals as sing le foster parents or to plac

ing gay and lesbian children. No same-sex couple has ever3 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

Opinion of the Court sought certification from CSS. If one did, CSS would direct the couple to one of the more than 20 other agencies in the City, all of which currently certify same-sex couples. For over 50 years, CSS successfully contracted with the City to provide foster care services while holding to these beliefs. But things changed in 2018. After receiving a complaint about a different agency, a newspaper ran a story in which a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Philadelphia stated that CSS would not be able to cons ider prospective foster par

ents in same-sex marriages. The City Council called for an investigation, saying that the City had “laws in place to pro

tect its people from discrimination that occurs under the guise of religious freedom.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 147a. The Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations launched an inquiry. And the Commissioner of the Department of Hu

man Services held a meeting with the leadership of CSS. She remarked that “things have changed since 100 years ago,” and “it would be great if we followed the teachings of Pope Francis, the voice of the Catholic Church.” App. 366. Immediately after the meeting, the Department informed CSS that it would no longer refer children to the agency. The City later explained that the refusal of CSS to certify same-sex couples violated a non-discrimination provision in its contract with the City as well as the non-discrimination requirements of the citywide Fa ir Practices Ordinance. The City stated that it would not enter a full foster care contract with CSS in the future unless the agency agreed to certify same-sex couples. CSS and three foster parent s affiliated with the agency filed suit against the City, the Department, and the Com

mission. The Support Center for Child Advocates and Phil

adelphia Family Pride intervened as defendants. As rele

vant here, CSS alleged that the referral freeze violated the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amend

ment. CSS sought a temporary restraining order and pre

liminary injunction directing the Department to continue4 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

Opinion of the Court referring children to CSS with out requiring the agency to certify same-sex couples. The District Court denied preliminary relief. It con

cluded that the contractual non-discrimination require

ment and the Fair Practices Ordinance were neutral and generally applicable under Employment Division, Depart

ment of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith , 494 U. S. 872 (1990), and that the free exercise claim was therefore un

likely to succeed. 320 F. Supp. 3d 661, 680–690 (ED Pa. 2018). The court also determined that the free speech claims were unlikely to succeed because CSS performed cer

tifications as part of a government program. Id. , at 695–700. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed. Be

cause the contract between the parties had expired, the court focused on whether the Ci ty could insist on the inclu

sion of new language forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation as a condition of contract renewal. 922 F. 3d 140, 153 (2019). The court concluded that the pro

posed contractual terms were a neutral and generally ap

plicable policy under Smith . 922 F. 3d, at 152–159. The court rejected the agency’s free speech claims on the same grounds as the District Court. Id. , at 160–162. CSS and the foster parents sought review. They chal

lenged the Third Circuit’s dete rmination that the City’s ac

tions were permissible under Smith and also asked this Court to reconsider that precedent. We granted certiorari. 589 U. S. ___ (2020).

II A The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, appli

cable to the States under the Fourteenth Amendment, pro

vides that “Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise” of religion. As an initial matter, it is plain5 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

Opinion of the Court that the City’s actions have burdened CSS’s religious exer

cise by putting it to the choice of curtailing its mission or approving relationships inconsistent with its beliefs. The City disagrees. In its view, certification reflects only that foster parents satisfy the statutory criteria, not that the agency endorses their relationships. But CSS believes that certification is tantamount to endorsement. And “religious beliefs need not be acceptable, logical, consistent, or com

prehensible to others in or der to merit First Amendment protection.” Thomas v. Review Bd. of Ind. Employment Se

curity Div. , 450 U. S. 707, 714 (1981). Our task is to decide whether the burden the City has placed on the religious ex

ercise of CSS is constitutionally permissible. Smith held that laws incidentally burdening religion are ordinarily not subject to strict scrutiny under the Free Ex

ercise Clause so long as they are neutral and generally ap

plicable. 494 U. S., at 878–882. CSS urges us to overrule Smith , and the concurrences in the judgment argue in favor of doing so, see post , p. 1 (opinion of A LITO , J.); post , p. 1 (opinion of G ORSUCH , J.). But we need not revisit that de

cision here. This case falls outside Smith because the City has burdened the religious exercise of CSS through policies that do not meet the requirement of being neutral and gen

erally applicable. See Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc.

v. Hialeah , 508 U. S. 520, 531–532 (1993). Government fails to act neutrally when it proceeds in a manner intolerant of religious beliefs or restricts practices because of their religious nature. See Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n , 584 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2018) (slip op., at 16–17); Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 533. CSS points to evidence in the record that it believes demonstrates that the City has transgressed this neutrality standard, but we find it more straightforward to resolve this case under the rubric of general applicability. A law is not generally applicable if it “invite[s]” the gov

ernment to consider the particular reasons for a person’s6 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

Opinion of the Court conduct by providing “ ‘a mechanism for individualized ex

emptions.’ ” Smith

, 494 U. S., at 884 (quoting Bowen v. Roy

, 476 U. S. 693, 708 (1986) (opinion of Burger, C. J., joined by Powell and Rehnquist, JJ.)). For example, in Sherbert v. Verner , 374 U. S. 398 (1963), a Seventh-day Adventist was fired because she would not work on Saturdays. Unable to find a job that would allow her to keep the Sabbath as her faith required, she applied for unemployment benefits. Id.

, at 399–400. The State denied her application under a law prohibiting eligibility to claimants who had “failed, without good cause . . . to accept available suitable work.” Id. , at 401 (internal quotation marks omitted). We held that the denial infringed her free exercise rights and could be justi

fied only by a compelling interest. Id. , at 406. Smith later explained that the unemployment benefits law in Sherbert was not generally applicable because the “good cause” standard permitted the government to grant exemptions based on the circumstances underlying each ap

plication. See 494 U. S., at 884 (citing Roy , 476 U. S., at 708; Sherbert , 374 U. S., at 401, n. 4). Smith went on to hold that “where the State has in place a system of individ

ual exemptions, it may not refuse to extend that system to cases of ‘religious hardship’ without compelling reason.” 494 U. S., at 884 (quoting Roy , 476 U. S., at 708); see also Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 537 (same). A law also lacks general applicability if it prohibits reli

gious conduct while permitting secular conduct that under

mines the government’s asserted interests in a similar way. See id. , at 542–546. In Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc.

v. Hialeah , for instance, the City of Hialeah adopted several ordinances prohibiting animal sacrifice, a practice of the Santeria faith. Id. , at 524–528. The City claimed that the ordinances were necessary in pa rt to protect public health, which was “threatened by the disposal of animal carcasses in open public places.” Id. , at 544. But the ordinances did7 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

Opinion of the Court not regulate hunters’ disposal of their kills or improper gar

bage disposal by restaurants, both of which posed a similar hazard. Id. , at 544–545. The Court concluded that this and other forms of underinclusiveness meant that the ordi

nances were not generally applicable. Id. , at 545–546.

B The City initially argued that CSS’s practice violated sec

tion 3.21 of its standard foster care contract. We conclude, however, that this provision is not generally applicable as required by Smith . The current version of section 3.21 spec

ifies in pertinent part:

“ Rejection of Referral . Provider shall not reject a child or family including, but not limited to, . . . pro

spective foster or adoptive parents, for Services based upon . . . their . . . sexual orientation . . . unless an ex

ception is granted by the Commissioner or the Commis

sioner’s designee, in his/her sole discretion.” Supp. App. to Brief for City Respondents 16–17. This provision requires an agency to provide “Services,” defined as “the work to be pe rformed under this Contract,” App. 560, to prospective foster parents regardless of their sexual orientation. Like the good cause provision in Sherbert , section 3.21 in

corporates a system of individual exemptions, made availa

ble in this case at the “sole discretion” of the Commissioner. The City has made clear that the Commissioner “has no in

tention of granting an exception” to CSS. App. to Pet. for Cert. 168a. But the City “may not refuse to extend that [exemption] system to cases of ‘religious hardship’ without compelling reason.” Smith , 494 U. S., at 884 (quoting Roy

, 476 U. S., at 708). The City and intervenor-respondents resist this conclu

sion on several grounds. They first argue that governments should enjoy greater leeway under the Free Exercise Clause8 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

Opinion of the Court when setting rules for contractors than when regulating the general public. The government, they observe, commands heightened powers when managing its internal operations. See NASA v. Nelson , 562 U. S. 134, 150 (2011); Engquist v. Oregon Dept. of Agriculture , 553 U. S. 591, 598–600 (2008). And when individuals enter in to government employment or contracts, they accept certain restrictions on their free

dom as part of the deal. See Garcetti v. Ceballos , 547 U. S. 410, 418–420 (2006); Board of Comm’rs, Wabaunsee Cty. v. Umbehr , 518 U. S. 668, 677–678 (1996). Given this context, the City and intervenor-respondents contend, the govern

ment should have a freer hand when dealing with contrac

tors like CSS. These considerations cannot save the City here. As Phil

adelphia rightly acknowledges, “principles of neutrality and general applicability still constrain the government in its capacity as manager.” Brief for City Respondents 11– 12. We have never suggested that the government may dis

criminate against religion when acting in its managerial role. And Smith itself drew support for the neutral and gen

erally applicable standard from cases involving internal government affairs. See 494 U. S., at 883–885, and n. 2 (cit

ing Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Assn.

, 485 U. S. 439 (1988); Roy , 476 U. S. 693). The City and intervenor-respondents accordingly ask only that courts ap

ply a more deferential approa ch in determining whether a policy is neutral and generally applicable in the contracting context. We find no need to resolve that narrow issue in this case. No matter the level of deference we extend to the City, the inclusion of a formal system of entirely discretion

ary exceptions in section 3.21 renders the contractual non

discrimination requirement not generally applicable. Perhaps all this explains why the City now contends that section 3.21 does not apply to CSS’s refusal to certify samesex couples after all. Contrast App. to Pet. for Cert. 167a– 168a with Brief for City Respondents 35–36. Instead, the9 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

Opinion of the Court City says that section 3.21 addresses only “an agency’s right to refuse ‘referrals’ to place a child with a certified foster family.” Brief for City Respondents 36. We think the City had it right the first time. Although the section is titled “Rejection of Referral,” the text sweeps more broadly, for

bidding the rejection of “prospe ctive foster . . . parents” for “Services,” without limitation. Supp. App. to Brief for City Respondents 16. The City maintains that certification is one of the services foster agencies are hired to perform, so its attempt to backtrack on the reach of section 3.21 is un

availing. See A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The In

terpretation of Legal Texts 222 (2012) (“[A] title or heading should never be allowed to ov erride the plain words of a text.”). Moreover, the City adopted the current version of section 3.21 shortly after de claring that it would make CSS’s obligation to certify same-sex couples “explicit” in fu

ture contracts, App. to Pet. for Cert. 170a, confirming our understanding of the text of the provision. The City and intervenor-respondents add that, notwith

standing the system of exceptions in section 3.21, a sepa

rate provision in the contract independently prohibits dis

crimination in the certification of foster parents. That provision, section 15.1, bars discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and it does not on its face allow for ex

ceptions. See Supp. App. to Brief for City Respondents 31. But state law makes clear that “one part of a contract can

not be so interpreted as to annul another part.” Shehadi v. Northeastern Nat. Bank of Pa. , 474 Pa. 232, 236, 378 A. 2d 304, 306 (1977); see Commonwealth ex rel. Kane v. UPMC

, 634 Pa. 97, 135, 129 A. 3d 441, 464 (2015). Applying that “fundamental” rule here, Shehadi , 474 Pa., at 236, 378 A. 2d, at 306, an exception from section 3.21 also must gov

ern the prohibition in section 15.1, lest the City’s reserva

tion of the authority to grant such an exception be a nullity. As a result, the contract as a whole contains no generally applicable non-discrimination requirement.10 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

Opinion of the Court Finally, the City and intervenor-respondents contend that the availability of exceptions under section 3.21 is ir

relevant because the Commissioner has never granted one. That misapprehends the issue. The creation of a formal mechanism for granting exceptions renders a policy not generally applicable, regardless whether any exceptions have been given, because it “invite[s]” the government to decide which reasons for not complying with the policy are worthy of solicitude, Smith , 494 U. S., at 884—here, at the Commissioner’s “sole discretion.” The concurrence objects that no party raised these argu

ments in this Court. Post , at 6 (opinion of G ORSUCH , J.). But CSS, supported by the United States, contended that the City’s “made-for-CSS Secti on 3.21 permits discretionary ‘exception[s]’ from the requirement ‘not [to] reject a child or family’ based upon ‘their . . . sexual orientation,’ ” which “alone triggers strict scrutiny .” Reply Brief 5 (quoting Supp. App. to Brief for City Respondents 16; some altera

tions in original); see also Brief for Petitioners 26–27 (sec

tion 3.21 triggers strict scrutiny); Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 21–22 (same). The concurrence favors the City’s reading of section 3.21, see post , at 5–6, but we find CSS’s position more persuasive.

C In addition to relying on the contract, the City argues that CSS’s refusal to certify same-sex couples constitutes an “Unlawful Public Accommodations Practice[ ]” in viola

tion of the Fair Practices Ordinance. That ordinance for

bids “deny[ing] or interfer[ing] with the public accommoda

tions opportunities of an individual or otherwise discriminat[ing] based on his or her race, ethnicity, color, sex, sexual orientation, . . . disability, marital status, famil

ial status,” or several other protected categories. Phila. Code §9–1106(1) (2016). The City contends that foster care11 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

Opinion of the Court agencies are public accommodations and therefore forbid

den from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation when certifying foster parents. CSS counters that “foster care has never been treated as a ‘public accommodation’ in Philadelphia.” Brief for Peti

tioners 13. In any event, CSS adds, the ordinance cannot qualify as generally applicable because the City allows ex

ceptions to it for secular re asons despite denying one for CSS’s religious exercise. But that constitutional issue arises only if the ordinance applies to CSS in the first place. We conclude that it does not because foster care agencies do not act as public accommodati ons in performing certifica

tions. The ordinance defines a public accommodation in rele

vant part as “[a]ny place, pr ovider or public conveyance, whether licensed or not, which solicits or accepts the pat

ronage or trade of the public or whose goods, services, facil

ities, privileges, advantages or accommodations are ex

tended, offered, sold, or othe rwise made available to the public.” §9–1102(1)(w). Certification is not “made available to the public” in the usual sense of the words. To make a service “available” means to make it “accessible, obtaina

ble.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary 84 (11th ed. 2005); see also 1 Oxford English Dictionary 812 (2d ed. 1989) (“capable of being made use of, at one’s disposal, within one’s reach”). Related state law illustrates the same point. A Pennsylvania antidiscrimination statute similarly defines a public accommodation as an accommodation that is “open to, accepts or solicits the patronage of the general public.” Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 43, §954( l ) (Purdon Cum. Supp. 2009). It fleshes out that definition with examples like ho

tels, restaurants, drug stor es, swimming pools, barber

shops, and public conveyances. Ibid. The “common theme” is that a public accommodation must “provide a benefit to the general public allowing individual members of the gen

-12 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

Opinion of the Court eral public to avail themselves of that benefit if they so de

sire.” Blizzard v. Floyd , 149 Pa. Commw. 503, 506, 613 A. 2d 619, 621 (1992). Certification as a foster pare nt, by contrast, is not readily accessible to the public. It involves a customized and selec

tive assessment that bears little resemblance to staying in a hotel, eating at a restaurant, or riding a bus. The process takes three to six months. Applicants must pass back

ground checks and a medical exam. Foster agencies are re

quired to conduct an intensiv e home study during which they evaluate, among other things, applicants’ “mental and emotional adjustment,” “community ties with family, friends, and neighbors,” and “[e]xisting family relation

ships, attitudes and expectations regarding the applicant’s own children and parent/child relationships.” 55 Pa. Code §3700.64. Such inquiries would raise eyebrows at the local bus station. And agencies understandably approach this sensitive process from different angles. As the City itself explains to prospective foster parents, “[e]ach agency has slightly different requirements, specialties, and training programs.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 197a. All of this confirms that the one-size-fits-all public accommodations model is a poor match for the foster care system. The City asks us to adhere to the District Court’s con

trary determination that CSS qualifies as a public accom

modation under the ordinance. The concurrence adopts the City’s argument, seeing no incongruity in deeming a private religious foster agency a public accommodation. See post , at 3 (opinion of G ORSUCH , J.). We respectfully disagree with the view of the City and the concurrence. Although “we ordinarily defer to lower court constructions of state statutes, we do not invariably do so.” Frisby v. Schultz , 487 U. S. 474, 483 (1988) (citation omitted). Deference would be inappropriate here. The District Court did not take into account the uniquely selective nature of the certification13 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

Opinion of the Court process, which must inform the applicability of the ordi

nance. We agree with CSS’s position, which it has main

tained from the beginning of this dispute, that its “foster services do not constitute a ‘public accommodation’ under the City’s Fair Practices Ordinance, and therefore it is not bound by that ordinance.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 159a. We therefore have no need to assess whether the ordinance is generally applicable.

III The contractual non-discrimination requirement imposes a burden on CSS’s religious exercise and does not qualify as generally applicable. The concurrence protests that the “Court granted certiorari to de cide whether to overrule [ Smith ],” and chides the Court for seeking to “sidestep the question.” Post , at 1 (opinion of G ORSUCH , J.). But the Court also granted review to decide whether Philadelphia’s actions were permissible under our precedents. See Pet. for Cert. i. CSS has demonstrated that the City’s actions are subject to “the most rigorous of scrutiny” under those prec

edents. Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 546. Because the City’s ac

tions are therefore examined under the strictest scrutiny regardless of Smith , we have no occasion to reconsider that decision here. A government policy can survive strict scrutiny only if it advances “interests of the highest order” and is narrowly tailored to achieve those interests. Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 546 (internal quotation marks omitted). Put another way, so long as the government can achieve its interests in a manner that does not burden religion, it must do so. The City asserts that its non-discrimination policies serve three compelling interests: maximizing the number of foster parents, protecting the City from liability, and ensur

ing equal treatment of prospecti ve foster parents and foster children. The City states these objectives at a high level of14 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

Opinion of the Court generality, but the First Amendment demands a more pre

cise analysis. See Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal , 546 U. S. 418, 430–432 (2006) (discussing the compelling interest test applied in Sherbert and Wiscon

sin v. Yoder , 406 U. S. 205 (1972)). Rather than rely on “broadly formulated interests,” courts must “scrutinize[ ] the asserted harm of granting specific exemptions to partic

ular religious claimants.” O Centro , 546 U. S., at 431. The question, then, is not whether the City has a compelling in

terest in enforcing its non-di scrimination policies generally, but whether it has such an interest in denying an exception to CSS. Once properly narrowed, the City’s asserted interests are insufficient. Maximizing the number of foster families and minimizing liability are important goals, but the City fails to show that granting CSS an exception will put those goals at risk. If anything, including CSS in the program seems likely to increase, not reduce, the number of available foster parents. As for liability, the City offers only speculation that it might be sued over C SS’s certification practices. Such speculation is insufficient to satisfy strict scrutiny, see Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Assn. , 564 U. S. 786, 799–800 (2011), particularly because the authority to cer

tify foster families is delegated to agencies by the State, not the City, see 55 Pa. Code §3700.61. That leaves the interest of the City in the equal treatment of prospective foster parents and foster children. We do not doubt that this interest is a weighty one, for “[o]ur society has come to the recognition that gay persons and gay cou

ples cannot be treated as social outcasts or as inferior in dignity and worth.” Masterpiece Cakeshop , 584 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9). On the facts of this case, however, this in

terest cannot justify denying CSS an exception for its reli

gious exercise. The creation of a system of exceptions under the contract undermines the City’s contention that its non

discrimination policies can brook no departures. See15 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

Opinion of the Court

Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 546–547. The City offers no compel

ling reason why it has a particular interest in denying an exception to CSS while making them available to others.

* * * As Philadelphia acknowledges, CSS has “long been a point of light in the City’s fost er-care system.” Brief for City Respondents 1. CSS seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else. The refusal of Philadelphia to contract with CSS for the provision of foster care services unless it agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents cannot survive strict scrutiny, and violates the First Amendment. In view of our conclusion that the actions of the City vio

late the Free Exercise Clause, we need not consider whether they also violate the Free Speech Clause. The judgment of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is reversed, and the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.

It is so ordered._________________

_________________ 1 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

B ARRETT , J., concurring 

## SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 19–123

SHARONELL FULTON, ET AL ., PETITIONERS v. CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, ET AL

.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
[June 17, 2021]

J USTICE B ARRETT , with whom J USTICE K AVANAUGH joins, and with whom J USTICE B REYER joins as to all but the first paragraph, concurring.
In Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith , 494 U. S. 872 (1990), this Court held that a neutral and generally applicable law typically does not violate the Free Exercise Clause—no matter how severely that law burdens religious exercise. Petitioners, their amici , schol

ars, and Justices of this Court have made serious argu

ments that Smith ought to be overruled. While history looms large in this debate, I find the historical record more silent than supportive on the question whether the found

ing generation understood the First Amendment to require religious exemptions from generally applicable laws in at least some circumstances. In my view, the textual and structural arguments against Smith are more compelling. As a matter of text and structure, it is difficult to see why the Free Exercise Clause—lone among the First Amend

ment freedoms—offers nothing more than protection from discrimination. Yet what should replace Smith ? The prevailing assump

tion seems to be that strict scrutiny would apply whenever a neutral and generally applicable law burdens religious ex

ercise. But I am skeptical about swapping Smith ’s categor

ical antidiscrimination approach for an equally categorical2 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

B ARRETT , J., concurring strict scrutiny regime, particula rly when this Court’s reso

lution of conflicts between generally applicable laws and other First Amendment rights—like speech and assem

bly—has been much more nuanced. There would be a num

ber of issues to work through if Smith were overruled. To name a few: Should entities like Catholic Social Services— which is an arm of the Catholic Church—be treated differ

ently than individuals? Cf. Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lu

theran Church and School v. EEOC , 565 U. S. 171 (2012). Should there be a distinction between indirect and direct burdens on religious exercise? Cf. Braunfeld v. Brown , 366 U. S. 599, 606–607 (1961) (plurality opinion). What forms of scrutiny should apply? Compare Sherbert v. Verner , 374 U. S. 398, 403 (1963) (assessing whether government’s in

terest is “ ‘compelling’ ”), with Gillette v. United States , 401 U. S. 437, 462 (1971) (assessing whether government’s in

terest is “substantial”). And if the answer is strict scrutiny, would pre- Smith cases rejecting free exercise challenges to garden-variety laws come out the same way? See Smith

, 494 U. S., at 888–889. We need not wrestle with these questions in this case, though, because the same standard applies regardless whether Smith stays or goes. A longstanding tenet of our free exercise jurisprudence—one that both pre-dates and survives Smith —is that a law burdening religious exercise must satisfy strict scrutiny if it gives government officials discretion to grant individualized exemptions. See id., at 884 (law not generally applicable “where the State has in place a system of individual exemptions” (citing Sherbert

, 374 U. S., at 401, n. 4)); see also Cantwell v. Connecticut

, 310 U. S. 296, 303–307 (1940) (subjecting statute to height

ened scrutiny because exemptions lay in discretion of gov

ernment official). As the Cou rt’s opinion today explains, the government contract at issue provides for individualized ex

emptions from its nondiscrimi nation rule, thus triggering strict scrutiny. And all nine Justices agree that the City3 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

B ARRETT , J., concurring cannot satisfy strict scrutiny. I therefore see no reason to decide in this case whether Smith should be overruled, much less what should replace it. I join the Court’s opinion in full.A LITO , J., concurring

_________________

_________________ 1 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 

## SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 19–123

SHARONELL FULTON, ET AL ., PETITIONERS v. CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, ET AL

.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
[June 17, 2021]

J USTICE A LITO , with whom J USTICE T HOMAS and J USTICE G ORSUCH join, concurring in the judgment. This case presents an important constitutional question that urgently calls out for re view: whether this Court’s gov

erning interpretation of a bedr ock constitutional right, the right to the free exercise of religion, is fundamentally wrong and should be corrected. In Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith , 494 U. S. 872 (1990), the Court abruptly pushed aside nearly 40 years of precedent and held that the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause tolerates any rule that categorically prohibits or commands specified conduct so long as it does not target religious practice. Even if a rule serves no important purpose and has a devastating effect on religious freedom, the Constitution, according to Smith

, provides no protection. This severe holding is ripe for reex

amination.

I There is no question that Smith ’s interpretation can have startling consequences. Here are a few examples. Suppose that the Volstead Act, which implemented the Prohibition Amendment, had not contained an exception for sacramen

tal wine. See Pub. L. 66, §3, 41 Stat. 308–309. The Act would have been consistent with Smith even though itA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 2 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment would have prevented the celebration of a Catholic Mass anywhere in the United States. 1 Or suppose that a State, following the example of seve ral European countries, made it unlawful to slaughter an animal that had not first been rendered unconscious. 2 That law would be fine under Smith even though it would outlaw kosher and halal slaughter. 3 Or suppose that a jurisdiction in this country, following the recommendations of medical associations in Europe, banned the circumcision of infants. 4 A San Fran

cisco ballot initiative in 2010 proposed just that. 5 A cate

gorical ban would be allowed by Smith even though it would prohibit an ancient and important Jewish and Muslim prac

tice. 6 Or suppose that this Court or some other court en

forced a rigid rule prohibiting attorneys from wearing any

——————

1 Code of Canon Law, Canon §924 (Eng. transl. 1998).

2 See Law Library of Congress, Glob al Legal Research Center, Legal Restrictions on Religious Slaughte r in Europe (Mar. 2018), www.loc.gov/ law/help/religious-slaughter/re ligious-slaughter-europe.pdf.

3 Id. , at 1–2.

4 See Frisch et al., Cultural Bias in the AAP’s 2012 Technical Report and Policy Statement on Male Circumcision, 131 Pediatrics 796, 799 (2013) (representatives of pediatric medical associations in 16 European countries and Canada recommending against circumcision because the practice “has no compelling health benefits, causes postoperative pain, can have serious long-term consequenc es, constitutes a violation of the United Nations’ Declaration of the Ri ghts of the Child, and conflicts with the Hippocratic oath”).

5 See Initiative Measure To Be Submitted Directly to the Voters: Gen

ital Cutting of Male Minors (Oct. 13, 2010) (online source archived at www.supremecourt.gov ); see also Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco v. Arntz , 2012 WL 11891474, *1 (Super. Ct. San Fran

cisco Cty., Cal., Apr. 6, 2012) (ordering that the proposed initiative be removed from the ballot because it was preempted by California law).

6 See 4 Encyclopaedia Judaica 730 (2d ed. 2007) (“Jewish circumcision originated, according to the biblical account, with Abraham”); The Shen

gold Jewish Encyclopedia 62 (3d ed. 2003) (“[Circumcision] has become a basic law among Jews. In times of pe rsecution, Jews risked their livesA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 3 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment form of head covering in court. The rule would satisfy Smith even though it would prevent Orthodox Jewish men, Sikh men, and many Muslim women from appearing. Many other examples could be added.We may hope that legislators and others with rulemaking authority will not go as far as Smith allows, but the present case shows that the dangers posed by Smith are not hypothetical. The city of Philadelphia (City) has issued an ultimatum to an arm of the Catholic Church: Either engage in conduct that the Church views as contrary to the tradi

tional Christian understanding of marriage or abandon a mission that dates back to the earliest days of the Church— providing for the care of orphaned and abandoned children. Many people believe they have a religious obligation to assist such children. Jews and Christians regard this as a scriptural command, 7 and it is a mission that the Catholic Church has undertaken since ancient times. One of the first known orphanages is said to have been founded by St. Basil the Great in the fourth century, 8 and for centuries, the care of orphaned and abandoned children was carried

—————— to fulfill the commandment”); B. Abramowitz, The Law of Israel: A Com

pilation of the Hayye Adam 206 (1897) (“It is a positive commandment that a father shall circumcise his so n or that he shall appoint another Israelite to act as his agent therein”); 3 Encyclopedia of Religion 1798 (2d ed. 2005) (“Muslims agree that [circumcision] must occur before mar

riage and is required of male converts”); H. Gibb & J. Kramers, Shorter Encyclopaedia of Islam 254 (1953).

7 See Holy Bible, Deuteronomy 10: 18, 16:11, 26:12–13; James 1:27.

8 See A. Crislip, From Monastery to Hospital: Christian Monasticism & the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity 104, 111 (2005) (describing Basil of Caesarea’s use of his 4th century monastery as a “place for the nourishment of orphans, ” who “lived in their own wing of the monastery,” “were provid ed with all the necessities of life[,] and were raised by the monastics acting as su rrogate parents” (internal quotation marks omitted)).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 4 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment out by religious orders. 9 In the New World, religious groups continued to take the lead. The first known orphanage in what is now the United States was founded by an order of Catholic nuns in New Orleans around 1729. 10 In the 1730s, the first two orphan

ages in what became the United States at the founding were established in Georgia by Lutherans and by Rev. George Whitefield, a leader in the “First Great Awaken

ing.” 11 In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Protestants and Catholics established orphanages in major cities. One of the first orphanages in Philadelphia was founded by a Catholic priest in 1798. 12 The Jewish Society for the Relief of Orphans and Children of Indigent Parents began its work in Charleston in 1801. 13 During the latter part of the 19th century and continuing into the 20th century, the care of children was shifted from orphanages to foster families, 14 but for many years, state and local government participati on in this field was quite limited. As one of Philadelphia’s amici puts it, “[i]nto the early twentieth century, the care of orphaned and aban

doned children in the United States remained largely in the hands of private charitable and religious organizations.” 15 In later years, an influx of federal money 16 spurred States

——————

9 Ransel, Orphans and Foundlings, in 3 Encyclopedia of European So

cial History 497, 498 (2001).

10 T. Hacsi, Second Home: Orphan Asylums and Poor Families in America 17 (1997).

11 Id. , at 17–18; F. Chapell, The Gr eat Awakening of 1740, pp. 90–91 (1903).

12 2 Encylopedia of the New American Nation 477 (2006); Hacsi, Second Home, at 18.

13 15 Encyclopaedia Judaica 485.

14 2 Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood 639–640 (2004); Brief for Historians of Child Welfare as Amici Curiae 16–17.

15 Brief for Annie E. Casey Foundation et al. as Amici Curiae 4–5.

16 See Social Security Act, §521, 49 Stat. 627, 633; Social Security ActA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 5 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment and local governments to take a more active role, and today many governments administer what is essentially a licens

ing system. As is typical in other jurisdictions, no private charitable group may recruit, vet, or support foster parents in Philadelphia without the City’s approval. Whether with or without government participation, Catholic foster care agencies in Philadelphia and other cit

ies have a long record of finding homes for children whose parents are unable or unwilling to care for them. Over the years, they have helped thousands of foster children and parents, and they take special pride in finding homes for children who are hard to place, including older children and those with special needs. 17 Recently, however, the City has barred Catholic Social Services (CSS) from continuing this work. Because the Catholic Church continues to believe that marriage is a bond between one man and one woman, CSS will not vet same-sex couples. As far as th e record reflects, no same-sex couple has ever approached CSS, but if that were to occur, CSS would simply refer the couple to another agency that is happy to provide that serv ice—and there are at least 27 such agencies in Philadelphia. App. 171; App. to Pet. for Cert. 137a; see also id., at 286a. Thus, not only is there no evidence that CSS’s policy has ever interfered in the slight

est with the efforts of a same-sex couple to care for a foster child, there is no reason to fear that it would ever have that effect. None of that mattered to Philadelphia. When a newspa

per publicized CSS’s policy, the City barred CSS from con

tinuing its foster care work. Remarkably, the City took this

—————— Amendments of 1961, 75 Stat. 131.

17 See United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Discrimination Against Catholic Adoption Servic es (2018), https://www. usccb.org/issues

and-action/religious-liberty/upload/Discrimination-against-Catholic

adoption-services.pdf.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 6 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment step even though it threaten s the welfare of children await

ing placement in foster homes. There is an acute shortage of foster parents, both in Philadelphia and in the country at large. 18 By ousting CSS, the City eliminated one of its ma

jor sources of foster homes. And that’s not all. The City

——————

18 See Brief for Petitioners 11–12 (citing Wax-Thibodeaux, “We Are Just Destroying These Kids”: The Foster Children Growing Up Inside Detention Centers, Washington Post (Dec. 30, 2019), https://www. washingtonpost.com/national/we-are-just-destroying-these-kids-the

foster-children-growing-up-inside-detention-centers/2019/12/30/97f65f3a

eaa2-11e9-9c6d-436a0df4f31d_story.html (describing the placement of foster children in emergency shelters and juvenile detention centers)); Brief in Opposition for City Respondents 4 (acknowledging 5,000 chil

dren in need of care in Philadelphi a); Terruso, Philly Puts Out “Urgent” Call—300 Families Needed for Fostering, Philadelphia Inqu irer (Mar. 8, 2018), https://www.inquirer.com/philly /news/foster-parents-dhs-philly

child-welfare-adoptions-20180308.html; see also Haskins, Kohomban, & Rodriguez, Keeping Up With the Ca seload: How To Recruit and Retain Foster Parents, The Brookings Institution (Apr. 24, 2019), https: www.brookings.edu/blog/upfront/ 2019/04/24/keeping-up-with-the-case

load-how-to-recruit-and-retain-foster -parents/ (explaining that “[t]he number of children in foster care ha[d] risen for the fifth consecutive year” to nearly 443,000 in 2017 and noting that “between 30 to 50 percent of foster families step down each ye ar”); Adams, Foster Care Crisis: More Kids Are Entering, but Fewer Fam ilies Are Willing To Take Them In, NBC News (Dec. 30, 2020), https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/ foster-care-crisis-more-kids-are-entering-fewer-families-are-n12 52450 (explaining how the COVID–19 pandemic has overwhelmed the United States’ foster care system); Satija, Fo r Troubled Foster Kids in Houston, Sleeping in Offices Is “Rock Bottom,” Texas Tribune (Apr. 20, 2017), https://www.texastribune.org/ 2017/04/20/texas-foster-care-placement

crisis/ (describing Texas’s shortage of placement options, which resulted in children sleeping in office buildin gs where “no one is likely to stop them” if they decide to run away); Associated Press, Indiana Agencies Desperate To Find Foster Parents With Children Entering System at AllTime High, Fox 59 (Mar. 7, 2017), https://fox59.com/news/indianaagencies-desperate-to-find-foster-parents-with-children-entering-system-at -all-time-high/ (noting that nearly 1,000 children in Indiana are in need of care and that, in the span of on e month, the State’s largest not-for

profit child services agency was able to place 3 children out of 150 to 200A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 7 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment went so far as to prohibit the placement of any children in homes that CSS had previously vetted and approved. Ex

emplary foster parents like petitioners Sharonell Fulton and Toni Lynn Simms-Busch are blocked from providing loving homes for children th ey were eager to help. 19 The City apparently prefers to risk leaving children without fos

ter parents than to allow CSS to follow its religiously dic

tated policy, which threatens no tangible harm. CSS broadly implies that the fundamental objective of City officials is to force the Philadelphia Archdiocese to change its position on marriage. Among other things, they point to statements by a City official deriding the Archdio

cese’s position as out of step with Pope Francis’s teaching and 21st century moral views. 20 But whether or not this is the City’s real objective, there can be no doubt that Phila

delphia’s ultimatum restricts CS S’s ability to do what it be

lieves the Catholic faith requires. Philadelphia argues that its stance is allowed by Smith because, it claims, a City policy categorically prohibits fos

ter care agencies from discri minating against same-sex cou

ples. Bound by Smith , the lower courts accepted this argu

ment, 320 F. Supp. 3d 661, 682–684 (ED Pa. 2018), 922 F. 3d 140, 156–159 (CA3 2019), and we then granted certi

orari, 589 U. S. ___ (2020). One of the questions that we accepted for review is “[w]hether Employment Division v.

—————— in one region); Lawrence, Georgia Fost er Care System in Crisis Due to Shortage of Foster Homes, ABC News Channel 9 (Feb. 15, 2017), https://newschannel9.com/news/local/g eorgia-foster-care-system-in-crisis

due-to-shortage-of-foster-homes (repor ting on a county in Georgia with 116 children in need of care but only 14 foster families).

19 See App. to Pet. for Ce rt. 19a, 64a, 140a; see also App. 59 (plaintiff Cecilia Paul testifying that, at the time of the evidentiary hearing below, she had no children in her care due to the City’s policy).

20 Id., at 182, 365–366 (describing Department of Human Services com

missioner’s comments to CSS that “it would be great if we followed the teachings of Pope Francis” and that “things have changed since 100 years ago”).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 8 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment

Smith should be revisited.” We should confront that ques

tion. Regrettably, the Court declines to do so. Instead, it re

verses based on what appears to be a superfluous (and likely to be short-lived) feature of the City’s standard an

nual contract with foster care agencies. Smith ’s holding about categorical rules does not apply if a rule permits in

dividualized exemptions, 494 U. S., at 884, and the majority seizes on the presence in the City’s standard contract of lan

guage giving a City official th e power to grant exemptions. Ante , at 7. The City tells us that it has never granted such an exemption and has no intention of handing one to CSS, Brief for City Respondents 36; App. to Pet. for Cert. 168a, but the majority reverses the decision below because the contract supposedly confers that never-used power. Ante

, at 10, 15. This decision might as well be written on the dissolving paper sold in magic shops. The City has been adamant about pressuring CSS to give in, and if the City wants to get around today’s decision, it can simply eliminate the never-used exemption power. 21 If it does that, then, voilà, today’s decision will vanish—and the parties will be back where they started. The City will claim that it is protected by Smith ; CSS will argue that Smith should be overruled;

——————

21 The Court’s decision also depends on its own contested interpretation of local and state law. See post , at 2–7 (G ORSUCH , J., concurring in judg

ment). Instead of addressing whet her the City’s Fair Practices Ordi

nance is generally applicable, the Court concludes that the ordinance does not apply to CSS because CSS’s foster care certification services do not constitute “public accommodations” under the FPO. Ante , at 11. Of course, this Court’s interpretation of state and local law is not binding on state courts. See, e.g., West v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co.

, 311 U. S. 223, 236 (1940); see also Danforth v. Minnesota , 552 U. S. 264, 291 (2008) (R OBERTS , C. J., dissenting) (“State courts are the final arbi

ters of their own state law”). Shou ld the Pennsylvania courts interpret the FPO differently, they would effect ively abrogate the Court’s decision in this case.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 9 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment the lower courts, bound by Smith , will reject that argument; and CSS will file a new petition in this Court challenging Smith . What is the point of going around in this circle? Not only is the Court’s decision unlikely to resolve the present dispute, it provides no guidance regarding similar controversies in other jurisdictions. From 2006 to 2011, Catholic Charities in Boston, San Francisco, Washington, D. C., and Illinois ceased providing adoption or foster care services after the city or state government insisted that they serve same-sex couples. Although the precise legal grounds for these actions are not always clear, it appears that they were based on laws or regulations generally pro

hibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. 22 And some jurisdictions have adopted anti-discrimination rules that expressly target adoption services. 23 Today’s de

-

——————

22 See 102 Code Mass. Regs. 1.03(1) (1997) (prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation as a condition of receiving the state license required to provide adoption services); San Francisco Admin. Code §12B.1(a) (2021) (requiring that all contracts with the city include a provision “obligating the contractor not to discriminate on the basis of ” sexual orientation and noting that the code section was last amended in 2000); D. C. Code §§ 2–1401.02(24), 2–1402.31 (2008) (prohibiting, on the basis of sexual orientation, the direct or indirect denial of “the full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services , facilities, privile ges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodations,” defined to include “establishments dealing with g oods or services of any kind”); Ill. Comp. Stat., ch. 775, §§5/1–103(O–1), (Q), 5/5–101(A), 5/5–102 (2011) (prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in a “place of public accommodation,” defined by a list of non-exclusive examples).

23 See, e.g., Cal. Welf. & Inst. Code Ann. §16013(a) (West 2018) (declar

ing that “all persons engaged in provid ing care and services to foster chil

dren, including . . . foster parents [a nd] adoptive parents . . . shall have fair and equal access to all available programs, services, benefits, and licensing processes, and shall not be subjected to discrimination . . . on the basis of . . . sexual orientation”); D. C. Munic. Regs., tit. 29, §6003.1(d) (2018) (providing that foster parents are “[t]o not be subject to discrimi

-A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 10 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment cision will be of no help in other cases involving the exclu

sion of faith-based foster care and adoption agencies unless by some chance the relevant laws contain the same glitch as the Philadelphia contractual provision on which the majority’s decision hangs. The decision will be even less significant in all the other important religious liberty cases that are bubbling up. We should reconsider Smith without further delay. The correct interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause is a ques

tion of great importance, and Smith ’s interpretation is hard to defend. It can’t be squared with the ordinary meaning of the text of the Free Exercise Clause or with the prevalent understanding of the scope of the free-exercise right at the time of the First Amendment’s adoption. It swept aside dec

ades of established precedent, and it has not aged well. Its interpretation has been undermined by subsequent schol

arship on the original meaning of the Free Exercise Clause. Contrary to what many initially expected, Smith has not provided a clear-cut rule that is easy to apply, and experi

ence has disproved the Smith majority’s fear that retention of the Court’s prior free-exerci se jurisprudence would lead to “anarchy.” 494 U. S., at 888. When Smith reinterpreted the Free Exercise Clause, four Justices—Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, and O’Connor— registered strong disagreement. Id., at 891, 892 (O’Connor, J., joined in part by Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun, JJ., concurring in judgment); id., at 907–908 (Blackmun, J., joined by Brennan and Marshall, JJ., dissenting). After

—————— nation as provided in the D. C. Hu man Rights Act,” which prohibits dis

crimination on the basis of sexual orientation); see also 110 Code Mass. Regs. 1.09(1) (2008) (“No applicant for or recipient of Department [of Children and Families] services shall, on the ground of . . . sexual orien

tation . . . be excluded from participat ion in, be denied the benefits of, or otherwise be subjected to discrimination in connection with any service, program, or activity administered or provided by the Department”).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 11 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment joining the Court, Justice Souter called for Smith to be reex

amined. Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah

, 508 U. S. 520, 559 (1993) (opinion concurring in part and concurring in judgment). So have five sitting Justices. Ken

nedy v. Bremerton School Dist. , 586 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2019) (A LITO , J., joined by T HOMAS , G ORSUCH , and K

AVANAUGH , JJ., concurring in denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 5–6); City of Boerne v. Flores , 521 U. S. 507, 566 (1997) (B REYER , J., dissenting). So have some of the coun

try’s most distinguished scholars of the Religion Clauses. See, e.g., McConnell, Free Exercise Revisionism and the Smith Decision, 57 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1109 (1990) (McConnell, Free Exercise Revisionism); La ycock, The Supreme Court’s Assault on Free Exercise, and the Amicus Brief That Was Never Filed, 8 J. L. & Religion 99 (1990). On two separate occasions, Congress, with virtual unanimity, expressed the view that Smith ’s interpretation is co ntrary to our society’s deep-rooted commitment to relig ious liberty. In enacting the Religious Freedom Restor ation Act of 1993, 107 Stat. 1488 (codified at 42 U. S. C. §2000bb et seq. ), and the Reli

gious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, 114 Stat. 803 (codified at 42 U. S. C. §2000cc et seq. ), Con

gress tried to restore the consti tutional rule in place before Smith was handed down. Those laws, however, do not ap

ply to most state action, and they leave huge gaps. It is high time for us to ta ke a fresh look at what the Free Exercise Clause demands.

II A To fully appreciate what the Court did in Smith , it is nec

essary to recall the substantial body of precedent that it dis

placed. Our seminal decision on the question of religious exemptions from generally applicable laws was Sherbert v. Verner , 374 U. S. 398 (1963), which had been in place forA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 12 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment nearly four decades when Smith was decided. In that ear

lier case, Adell Sherbert, a Seventh-day Adventist, was fired because she refused to work on Saturday, her Sabbath Day. 374 U. S.

, at 399. Unable to find other employment that did not require Saturday work, she applied for unem

ployment compensation but was rejected because state law disqualified claimants who “failed, without good cause . . . to accept available suitable work when offered. ” Id ., at 399–401, and n. 3 (internal quotation marks omitted). The State Supreme Court held that this denial of benefits did not violate Sherbert’s free-exerci se right, but this Court re

versed. In an opinion authored by Justice Brennan, the Court be

gan by surveying the Court’s few prior cases involving claims for religious exemptions from generally applicable laws. Id., at 402–403. In those decisions, the Court had not articulated a clear standard for resolving such conflicts, but as the Sherbert opinion accurately recounted, where claims for religious exemptions had be en rejected, “[t]he conduct or actions [in question] invariably posed some substantial threat to public safety, peace or order.” Id ., at 403. (As will be shown below, this description of the earlier decisions cor

responds closely with the understanding of the scope of the free-exercise right at the time of the First Amendment’s adoption. See infra , at 29–36.) After noting these earlier de cisions, the Court turned to the case at hand and concluded that the denial of benefits imposed a substantial burden on Sherbert’s free exercise of religion. 374 U. S., at 404. It “force[d] her to choose be

tween following the precepts of her religion and forfeiting benefits, on the one hand, and abandoning one of the pre

cepts of her religion in order to accept work, on the other hand.” Ibid . As a result, the Court reasoned, the decision below could be sustained only if it was “justified by a ‘com

pelling state interest.’ ” Id ., at 403, 406. The State argued that its law was needed to prevent “the filing of fraudulentA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 13 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment claims by unscrupulous claimants feigning religious objec

tions,” but Justice Brennan’s opinion found this justifica

tion insufficient because the State failed to show that “no alternative forms of regulation would combat such abuses without infringing First Amendment rights.” Id ., at 407. The test distilled from Sherbert —that a law that imposes a substantial burden on the exercise of religion must be nar

rowly tailored to serve a compelling interest—was the gov

erning rule for the next 37 years. Applying that test, the Court sometimes vindicated free-exercise claims. In Wis

consin v. Yoder , 406 U. S. 205, 234 (1972), for example, the Court held that a state law requiring all students to remain in school until the age of 16 violated the free-exercise rights of Amish parents whose religion required that children leave school after the eighth grade. The Court acknowl

edged the State’s “admittedly st rong interest in compulsory education” but concluded that the State had failed to “show with . . . particularity how [that interest] would be ad

versely affected by granting an exemption to the Amish.” Id ., at 236. And in holding that the Amish were entitled to a special exemption, the Court expressly rejected the inter

pretation of the Free Exercise Clause that was later em

braced in Smith . Indeed, the Yoder Court stated this point again and again: “[T]here are areas of conduct protected by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and thus beyond the power of the State to control, even under regu

lations of general applicability ”; “[a] regulation neutral on its face may, in its applicatio n, nonetheless offend the con

stitutional requirement for governmental neutrality if it un

duly burdens the free exercise of religion”; insisting that Amish children abide by the compulsory attendance re

quirement was unconstitutional even though it “applie[d] uniformly to all citizens of the State and d[id] not, on its face, discriminate against religio ns or a particular religion, [and was] motivated by legitimate secular concerns.” Id

., at 220 (emphasis added).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 14 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment Other decisions also accept ed free-exercise claims under the Sherbert test. In Thomas v. Review Bd. of Ind. Employ

ment Security Div. , 450 U. S. 707, 710, 720 (1981), the Court concluded that a State could not withhold unemployment benefits from a Jehovah’s Witness who quit his job because he refused to do work that he viewed as contributing to the production of military weapons. In so holding, the Court reiterated that “‘[a] regulation neutral on its face may, in its application, nonetheless o ffend the constitutional re

quirement for governmental neu trality if it unduly burdens the free exercise of religion.’ ” Id ., at 717 (quoting Yoder

, 406 U. S., at 220). Subsequently, in Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Comm’n of Fla ., 480 U. S. 136, 141 (1987), the Court found that a state rule that was “ ‘neutral and uniform in its ap

plication’ ” nevertheless violated the Free Exercise Clause under the Sherbert test. A similar violation was found in Frazee v. Illinois Dept. of Employment Security , 489 U. S. 829 (1989). Other cases applied Sherbert but found no violation. In United States v. Lee , 455 U. S. 252, 258 (1982), the Court held that mandatory contributio ns to Social Security were constitutional because they we re “indispensable to the fis

cal vitality of the social security system.” In Gillette v. United States , 401 U. S. 437, 462 (1971), denying conscien

tious-objector status to men whose opposition to war was limited to one particular conflict was held to be “strictly jus

tified by substantial government al interests.” In still other cases, the Court found Sherbert inapplicable either because the challenged law did not implicate the conduct of the in

dividual seeking an exemption, see Bowen v. Roy , 476 U. S. 693, 700 (1986); Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protec

tive Assn ., 485 U. S. 439, 450–451 (1988), or because the case arose in a context where the government exercised broader authority over assertions of individual rights, see O’Lone v. Estate of Shabazz , 482 U. S. 342, 353 (1987)A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 15 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment (prison); Goldman v. Weinberger , 475 U. S. 503, 506 (1986) (military). None of these decisions questioned the validity of Sherbert ’s interpretation of the free-exercise right.

B
This is where our case law stood when Smith reached the Court. The underlying situation in Smith was very similar to that in Sherbert . Just as Adell Sherbert had been denied unemployment benefits due to conduct mandated by her re

ligion (refraining from work on Saturday), Alfred Smith and Galen Black were denied une mployment benefits because of a religious practice (ingesting peyote as part of a worship service of the Native American Church). 494 U. S., at 874. Applying the Sherbert test, the Oregon Supreme Court held that this denial of benefits violated Smith’s and Black’s free-exercise rights, and this Court granted review. 24 The State defended the denial of benefits under the Sher

bert framework. It argued that it had a compelling interest in combating the use of dangerous drugs and that accom

modating their use for religious purposes would upset its enforcement scheme. Brief for Petitioners in Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources v. Smith , No. 88–1213, O. T. 1988, pp. 5–7, 12, 16. The State never suggested that Sherbert should be overruled. See Brief for Petitioners in No. 88–1213, at 11. Instead, the crux of its disagreement with Smith and Black and the State Supreme Court was whether its interest in preventing drug use could be served

——————

24 This Court actually granted review twice: once, after the state court first held that the denial of benefits was unconstitutional, see Smith v. Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources , 301 Ore. 209, 220, 721 P. 2d 445, 451 (1986), cert. granted 480 U. S. 916 (1987), and then again after the case was remanded for the state court to determine whether peyote consumption for religious use was unlawful under Oregon law,

see Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith , 485 U. S. 660, 662, 673–674 (1988). When the state court held that it was and reaffirmed its prior decision, 307 Ore. 68, 72–73, 763 P. 2d 146, 147– 148 (1988), the Court granted certiorari, 489 U. S. 1077 (1989).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 16 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment by a more narrowly tailored rule that made an exception for religious use by members of the Native American Church. The question divided the four Justices who objected to the Smith majority’s rationale. Compare 494 U. S., at 905–907 (O’Connor J., concurring in judgment), with id., at 909–919 (Blackmun, J., joined by Brennan and Marshall, JJ., dis

senting). And the Smith majority wanted no part of that question. Instead, without briefing or argument on whether Sherbert should be cast aside, the Court adopted what it seems to have thought was a clear-cut test that would be easy to apply: A “generally applicable and other

wise valid” rule does not violate the Free Exercise Clause “if prohibiting the exercise of religion . . . is not [its] object . . . but merely the incidental effect of ” its operation. 494 U. S., at 878. Other than cases involving rules that target religious conduct, the Sherbert test was held to apply to only two narrow categories of cases: (1) those involving the award of unemployment benefits or other schemes allowing individualized exemptions and (2) so-called “hybrid rights”

cases. See 494 U. S., at 881–884. 25

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25 J USTICE B ARRETT makes the surprising clai m that “[a] longstanding tenet of our free exercise jurisprudence” that “pre-dates” Smith is “that a law burdening religious exercise must satisfy strict scrutiny if it gives government officials discretion to grant individualized exemptions.” Ante , at 2 (concurring opinion). If ther e really were such a “longstanding [pre- Smith ] tenet,” one would expect to fi nd cases stating that rule, but J USTICE B ARRETT does not cite even one such case. Instead, she claims to find support by reading between th e lines of what the Court said in a footnote in Sherbert , 374 U. S., at 401, n. 4, and a portion of the opinion in Cantwell v. Connecticut , 310 U. S. 296, 303–307 (1940)). Ante , at 2. But even a close interlinear reading of those cases yields no evidence of this supposed tenet.

In the Sherbert footnote, the Court responded to the dissent’s argu

ment that South Carolina law did not recognize any exemptions from the general eligibility requirement for unemployment benefits. 374 U. S., at 419–420 (Harlan, J., dissenting). The footnote expressed skepticism about this interpretation of South Carolina law, but it did not suggestA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 17 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment To clear the way for this new regime, the majority was willing to take liberties. Paying little attention to the terms of the Free Exercise Clause, it was satisfied that its inter

pretation represented a “permissible” reading of the text, Smith , 494 U. S., at 878, and it did not even stop to explain why that was so. The majority made no effort to ascertain the original understanding of the free-exercise right, and it limited past precedents on grounds never previously sug

gested. Sherbert

, Thomas , and Hobbie were placed in a spe

cial category because they concerned the award of unem

ployment compensation, Smith , 494 U. S., at 883, and Yoder was distinguished on the ground that it involved both a free-exercise claim and a parental-rights claim, Smith, 494 U. S., at 881. Not only did these distinctions lack sup

port in prior case law, the issue in Smith itself could easily be viewed as falling into both of these special categories. After all, it involved claims for unemployment benefits, and members of the Native American Church who ingest peyote as part of a religious ceremony are surely engaging in ex

pressive conduct that falls within the scope of the Free Speech Clause. See, e.g. , Texas v. Johnson , 491 U. S. 397,

—————— that its analysis would have been any different if the dissent’s interpre

tation were correct.

In Cantwell , the Court addressed the consti tutionality of a state stat

ute that generally prohibited the so licitation of funds for religious pur

poses unless a public official found in advance that the cause was au

thentically religious. See 310 U. S., at 300–302. The Court held that the Free Exercise Clause prohibited the State from conditioning permission to solicit funds on an administrati ve finding about a religious group’s authenticity, but the Court did not su ggest that a blanket ban on solici

tation would have necessarily been sustained. On the contrary, it said that the State was “free to regulate the time and manner of solicitation generally, in the interest of public sa fety, peace, comfort or convenience.” Id ., at 307–308 (emphasis added). And the Court said not one word about “strict scrutiny,” a concept that was foreign to Supreme Court case law at that time. See Fallon, Strict Judicial Scrutiny, 54 UCLA L. Rev. 1267, 1284 (2007) (“Before 1960, what we would now call strict judicial scrutiny . . . did not exist”).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 18 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 404 (1989). None of these obstacles stopped the Smith majority from adopting its new rule and displacing decades of precedent. The majority feared that cont inued adherence to that case law would “cour[t] anarchy” because it “would open the pro

spect of constitutionally requi red religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind.” 494 U. S., at 888. The majority recognized that its new inter

pretation would place small religious groups at a “relative disadvantage,” but the majority found that preferable to the problems it envisioned if the Sherbert test had been re

tained

. 494 U. S., at 890. Four Justices emphatically disagreed with Smith ’s rein

terpretation of the Free Exe rcise Clause. Justice O’Connor wrote that this new reading “dramatically depart[ed] from well-settled First Amendment jurisprudence” and was “in

compatible with our Nation’s fundamental commitment to individual religious liberty.” 494 U. S., at 891 (opinion con

curring in judgment). Justices Brennan, Marshall, and Blackmun protested that the majority had “mischarac

teriz[ed]” and “discard[ed]” the Court’s free-exercise juris

prudence on its way to “perfunctorily dismiss[ing]” the “set

tled and inviolate principle” that state laws burdening religious freedom may stand only if “justified by a compel

ling interest that cannot be served by less restrictive means.” Id., at 907–908 (Blackmun, J., joined by Brennan and Marshall, JJ., dissenting). Smith ’s impact was quickly felt, and Congress was inun

dated with reports of the decision’s consequences. 26 In re

sponse, it attempted to restore the Sherbert test. In the

——————

26 A particularly heartbreaking example was a case in which a judge felt compelled by Smith to reverse his previous decision holding the state medical examiner liable for performi ng the autopsy of a young Hmong man who had been killed in a car a ccident. The young man’s parents were tortured by the thought that the autopsy would prevent their sonA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 19 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment House, then-Representative Charles Schumer introduced a bill that made a version of that test applicable to all actions taken by the Federal Government or the States. H. R. 1308, 103d Cong., 1st Sess. (1993). This bill, which eventually became the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), passed in the House without dissent, was approved in the Senate by a vote of 97 to 3, and was enthusiastically signed into law by President Clinton. 139 Cong. Rec. 27239–27341 (1993) (House voice vote); id ., at 26416 (Senate vote); Re

marks on Signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, 29 Weekly Comp. of Pres. Doc. 2377 (1993). And when this Court later held in City of Boerne , 521 U. S. 507, that Congress lacked the power under the 14th Amendment to impose these rules on the States, Congress responded by enacting the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Per

sons Act (RLUIPA) under its spending power and its power to regulate interstate commerce. See 114 Stat. 803. Intro

duced in the Senate by Sen. Orrin Hatch and cosponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy, RL UIPA imposed the same rules as RFRA on land use and prison regulations. S. 2869, 106th Cong., 2d Sess. (2000); 42 U. S. C. §2000cc et seq ; 146 Cong. Rec. 16698 (2000). RLUIPA passed both Houses of Con

gress without a single negati ve vote and, like RFRA, was signed by President Clinton. Id ., at 16703, 16623; State

ment on Signing the Religious Land Use and Institutional

ized Persons Act of 2000, 36 Weekly Comp. of Pres. Doc.

—————— from entering the afterlife. See Yang v. Sturner , 750 F. Supp. 558, 560 (RI 1990); see also 139 Cong. Rec. 9681 (1993) (remarks of Rep. Ed

wards). Members of Congress were also informed that veterans’ ceme

teries had refused to allow burial on weekends even when that was re

quired by the deceased’s religion, id ., at 9687 (remarks of Rep. Cardin), and that churches were prohibited from conducting services in areas zoned for commercial and industrial uses, id. , at 9684 (remarks of Rep. Schumer). In just the first three years after Smith , more than 50 cases were decided against religious claimants. 139 Cong. Rec., at 9685 (re

marks of Rep. Hoyer); see also id., at 9684 (remarks of Rep. Schumer) (“Smith was a devastating blow to religious freedom”).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 20 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 2168 (2000). RFRA and RLUIPA have rest ored part of the protection that Smith withdrew, but they are both limited in scope and can be weakened or repealed by Congress at any time. They are no substitute for a proper interpretation of the Free Ex

ercise Clause.

III A That project must begin with the constitutional text. In Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee , 1 Wheat. 304, 338–339 (1816), Justice Story laid down the guiding principle: “If the text be clear and distinct, no restricti on upon its plain and obvious import ought to be admitted, unless the inference be irre

sistible.” And even though we now have a thick body of precedent regarding the meaning of most provisions of the Constitution, our opinions cont inue to respect the primacy of the Constitution’s text. See, e.g ., Chiafalo v. Washington

, 591 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2020) (slip op., at 9–13) (starting with the text of Art. II, §1, before considering historical practice); Knick v. Township of Scott , 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 6) (beginning analysis with the text of the Takings Clause); Gamble v. United States , 587 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2019) (slip op., at 3–4) (starting with the text of the Fifth Amendment before turning to history and prec

edent); City of Boerne , 521 U. S., at 519 (“In assessing the breadth of §5’s enforcement powe r, we begin with its text”). Smith, however, paid shockingly little attention to the text of the Free Exercise Clause. Instead of examining what readers would have understood its words to mean when adopted, the opinion merely asked whether it was “permissible” to read the text to have the meaning that the majority favored. 494 U. S., at 878. This strange treatment of the constitutional text cannot be justified—and is espe

cially surprising since it clashes so sharply with the way in which Smith ’s author, Justice Scalia, generally treated theA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 21 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment text of the Constitution (and, indeed, with his entire theory of legal interpretation). As he put it, “What I look for in the Constitution is precisely what I look for in a statute: the original meaning of the text.” A. Scalia, A Matter of Inter

pretation 38 (1997). See also NLRB v. Noel Canning , 573 U. S. 513, 575–583 (2014) (Scalia, J., concurring in judg

ment); Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Dept. of Environmental Protection , 560 U. S. 702, 722 (2010) (plu

rality opinion of Scalia, J.); Maryland v. Craig , 497 U. S. 836, 860–861 (1990) (Scalia, J., dissenting). Justice Scalia’s opinion for the Court in District of Colum

bia v. Heller , 554 U. S. 570 (2008), is a prime example of his usual approach, and it is a model of what a reexamination of the Free Exercise Clause should entail. In Heller , after observing that the “Constitution was written to be under

stood by the voters,” Justice Scalia’s opinion begins by presuming that the “words and phrases” of the Second Amendment carry “their normal and ordinary . . . mean

ing.” Id ., at 576 (internal quotation marks omitted). The opinion then undertakes a careful examination of all the Amendment’s key terms. It does not simply ask whether its interpretation of the text is “permissible.” Smith , 494 U. S., at 878.

B Following the sound approach that the Court took in Hel

ler , we should begin by considering the “normal and ordi

nary” meaning of the text of the Free Exercise Clause: “Con

gress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise [of religion].” Most of these terms and phrases—“Congress,” 27

——————

27 Although the First Amendment refers to “Congress,” we have held that the Fourteenth Am endment—which references the entire “State,” not just a legislature—makes the ri ghts protected by the Amendment applicable to the States. Gitlow v. New York , 268 U. S. 652 (1925); Ham

ilton v. Regents of Univ. of Cal. , 293 U. S. 245 (1934); Cantwell , 310 U. S.22 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment

—————— 296; Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing , 330 U. S. 1 (1947). And we have long applied that Amendment to acti ons taken by those responsible for enforcing the law. See, e.g., Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protec

tive Assn. , 485 U. S. 439 (1988) (considering First Amendment claim based on federal agency’s decision); Thomas v. Review Bd. of Ind. Em

ployment Security Div. , 450 U. S. 707 (1981) (applying First Amendment against a state agency); Pickering v. Board of Ed. of Township High School Dist. 205

, Will Cty., 391 U. S. 563 (1968) (applying First Amend

ment against local board of education); see also U. S. Const., Amdt. 14, §1 (“No State shall make or enforce any law which sha ll abridge the priv

ileges or immunities of citizens of the United States” (emphasis added)).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 23 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment “shall make,” “no law,” 28 and “religion” 29 —do not require discussion for present purposes, and we can therefore focus on what remains: the term “prohibiting” and the phrase “the free exercise of religion.” Those words had essentially the same meaning in 1791

——————

28 The phrase “no law” applies to th e freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, as well as the right to the free exercise of religion, and there is no reason to believe that its meanin g with respect to all these rights is not the same. With respect to the fr eedom of speech, we have long held that “no law” does not mean that ev ery restriction on what a person may say or write is unconstitutional. See, e.g ., Miller v. California , 413 U. S. 15, 23 (1973); see also Federal Election Comm’n v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. , 551 U. S. 449, 482 (2007) (opinion of R OBERTS , C. J.); Times Film Corp. v. Chicago , 365 U. S. 43, 47–49 (1961). Many restrictions on what a person could lawfully say or write were well established at the time of the adoption of the First Amendment and have continued to this day. Fraudulent speech, speech integral to criminal conduct, speech so

liciting bribes, perjury, speech threat ening physical inju ry, and obscenity are examples. See, e.g., Donaldson v. Read Magazine, Inc. , 333 U. S. 178, 190–191 (1948) (fraud); Giboney v. Empire Storage & Ice Co. , 336 U. S. 490, 498 (1949) (speech integral to criminal conduct); McCutcheon v. Fed

eral Election Comm’n , 572 U. S. 185, 191–192 (2014) (plurality opinion) ( quid pro quo bribes); United States v. Dunnigan , 507 U. S. 87, 96–97 (1993) (perjury); Virginia v. Black , 538 U. S. 343, 359 (2003) (threats); Miller , 413 U. S., at 23 (obscenity). The First Amendment has never been thought to have done away wi th all these rules. Alexander Mei

klejohn reconciled this conclusion with the constitutional text: The First Amendment “does not forbid the abridgi ng of speech. But, at the same time, it does forbid the abridging of the freedom of speech.” Free Speech and Its Relation to Self-Government 19 (1948) (emphasis deleted). In other words, the Free Speech Clause pr otects a right that was understood at the time of adoption to have certain defined limits. See Konigsberg v. State Bar of Cal. , 366 U. S. 36, 49, and n. 10 (1961). As explained below, the same is true of the Free Exercise Clause. See infra , at 28–36. No one has ever seriously argued that the Free Exercise Clause protects every conceivable religious practice or even every conceivable form of worship, including such things as human sacrifice.

29 Whatever the outer boundaries of the term “religion” as used in the First Amendment, there can be no do ubt that CSS’s contested policy rep

resents an exercise of “religion.”A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 24 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment as they do today. “To prohibit” meant either “[t]o forbid” or “to hinder.” 2 S. Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Lan

guage (1755) (Johnson (1755)). 30 The term “exercise” had both a broad primary definition (“[p]ractice” or “outward performance”) and a narrower secondary one (an “[a]ct of divine worship whether publick or private”). 1 id

. 31 (The Court long ago declined to give the First Amendment’s ref

erence to “exercise” this narrow reading. See, e.g ., Cantwell

v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 303–304 (1940).) And “free,” in the sense relevant here, meant “unrestrained.” 1 John

son ( 1755). 32

——————

30 See also N. Bailey, Universal Etym ological English Dictionary (22d ed. 1770) (Bailey) (“to forbid, to bar, to keep from”); T. Dyche & W. Par

don, A New General English Dictionary (14th ed. 1771) (Dyche & Par

don) (“to forbid, bar, hinder, or keep from any thing”); 2 Johnson (6th ed. 1785) (“1. To forbid, to interdict by authority. . . . 2. To debar; to hinder”); 2 J. Ash, The New & Complete Dictionary of the English Language (2d ed. 1795) (Ash) (“To forbid, to interdict by authority; to debar, to hinder”); 2 N. Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) (Webster) (“1. To forbid; to interdict by authority; . . . 2. To hinder; to debar; to prevent; to preclude”); 2 J. Boag, The Imperial Lexicon of the English Language 275 (1850) (Boag) (“To forbid; to interdict by authority. To hinder; to debar; to prevent; to preclude”).

31 See also Bailey (“to practice”); Dyche & Pardon (“to practice or do a thing often; to employ one’s self fr equently in the same thing”); 1 Ash (“Practise, use, employment, a task, an act of divine worship”); 2 Johnson (9th ed. 1805) (“Practice; outward perf ormance”; “Act of divine worship, whether publick or private”); 1 Webster (“1. Use, practice; . . . 2. Practice; performance; as the exercise of religion . . . 10. Act of divine worship”); 1 Boag 503 (“Use; practice; . . . Practice; performance . . . Act of divine wor

ship”).

32 See also Dyche & Pardon (“at liberty , that can do or refuse at his pleasure, that is under no restraint”); 1 Ash (“Having liberty,” “unre

strained,” ”exempt”); 1 Webster (“1. Being at liberty; not being under ne

cessity or restraint, physical or moral . . . 5. Unconstrained; unre

strained; not under compulsion or control”); 1 Boag 567–568 (“Being at liberty; not being under necessity or restraint, physical or moral . . . Un

constrained; unrestrained, not under compulsion or control. Permitted; allowed; open; not appropriated. Not obstructed”).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 25 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment If we put these definitions together, the ordinary mean

ing of “prohibiting the free ex ercise of religion” was (and still is) forbidding or hindering unrestrained religious prac

tices or worship. That straightforward understanding is a far cry from the interpretation adopted in Smith . It cer

tainly does not suggest a distinction between laws that are generally applicable and laws that are targeted. As interpreted in Smith , the Clause is essentially an antidiscrimination provision: It means that the Federal Gov

ernment and the States cannot restrict conduct that consti

tutes a religious practice for some people unless it imposes the same restriction on everyone else who engages in the same conduct. Smith made no real attempt to square that equal-treatment interpretation with the ordinary meaning of the Free Exercise Clause’s language, and it is hard to see how that could be done. The key point for present purposes is that the text of the Free Exercise Clause gives a specific group of people (those who wish to engage in the “exercise of religion”) the right to do so without hindrance. The language of the Clause does not tie this right to the treatment of persons not in this
group. The oddity of Smith ’s interpretation can be illustrated by considering what the same sort of interpretation would mean if applied to other provisions of the Bill of Rights. Take the Sixth Amendment, which gives a specified group of people (the “accused” in criminal cases) a particular right (the right to the “Assistance of Counsel for [their] defence”). Suppose that Congress or a state legislature adopted a law banning counsel in all litigation , civil and criminal. Would anyone doubt that this law would violate the Sixth Amend

ment rights of criminal defendants? Or consider the Seventh Amendment, which gives a spec

ified group of people (parties in most civil “Suits at common law”) “the right of trial by jury.” Would there be any ques

-A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 26 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment tion that a law abolishing juries in all civil cases would vi

olate the rights of parties in cases that fall within the Sev

enth Amendment’s scope? Other examples involving language similar to that in the Free Exercise Clause are easy to imagine. Suppose that the amount of time generally allo tted to complete a state bar exam is 12 hours but that a pplicants with disabilities se

cure a consent decree allowing them an extra hour. Sup

pose that the State later adopts a rule requiring all appli

cants to complete the exam in 11 hours. Would anyone argue that this was consistent with the decree? Suppose that classic car enthusiasts secure the passage of a state constitutional amendment exempting cars of a certain age from annual safety inspections, but the legisla

ture later enacts a law requiring such inspections for all ve

hicles regardless of age. Can there be any doubt that this would violate the state constitution? It is not necessary to belabo r this point further. What all these examples show is that Smith ’s interpretation conflicts with the ordinary meaning of the First Amendment’s terms.

C Is there any way to bring about a reconciliation? The short answer is “no.” Survey all the briefs filed in support of respondents (they total more than 40) and three decades of law review articles, and what will you find? Philadel

phia’s brief refers in passing to one possible argument—and the source it cites is a law review article by one of Smith ’s leading academic critics, Professor Michael W. McConnell. See Brief for City Respondent s 49 (citing McConnell, Free Exercise Revisionism 1115). Trying to see if there was any way to make Smith fit with the constitutional text, Profes

sor McConnell came up with this argument—but then re

jected it. McConnell

, Free Exercise Revisionism 1115– 1116.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 27 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment The argument goes as follows: Even if a law prohibits con

duct that constitutes an essential religious practice, it can

not be said to “prohibit” the fr ee exercise of religion unless that was the lawmakers’ specific object. This is a hair-splitting interpretation. It certainly does not represent the “normal and ordinary” meaning of the Free Exercise Clause’s terms. See Heller , 554 U. S., at 576. Consider how it would play out if applied to some of the hy

pothetical laws discussed at the beginning of this opinion. A law categorically banning all wine would not “prohibit” the celebration of a Catholic Mass? A law categorically for

bidding the slaughter of a conscious animal would not “pro

hibit” kosher and halal slaughterhouses? A rule categori

cally banning any head covering in a courtroom would not “prohibit” appearances by orthodox Jewish men, Sikh men, and Muslim women who wear hijabs? It is no wonder that Smith ’s many defenders have almost uniformly foregone this argument.

D Not only is it difficult to square Smith ’s interpretation with the terms of the Free Exercise Clause, the absence of any language referring to equal treatment is striking. If equal treatment was the objective, why didn’t Congress say that? And since it would have been simple to cast the Free Exercise Clause in equal-treat ment terms, why would the state legislators who voted for ratification have read the Clause that way? It is not as if there were no models that could have been used. Other constitutional pr ovisions contain non-discrim

ination language. For example, Art. I, §9, cl. 6, provides that “[n]o Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another.” Under Art. IV, §2, cl. 1, “[t]he Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” Article V provides that “noA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 28 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” Language mandating equal treat

ment of one sort or another also appeared in the religious liberty provisions of colonial charters and state constitu

tions. 33 But Congress eschewed those models. The contrast between these readily available anti-discrimination models and the language that appears in the First Amendment speaks volumes.

IV A While we presume that the words of the Constitution carry their ordinary and norm al meaning, we cannot disre

gard the possibility that some of the terms in the Free Ex

ercise Clause had a special meaning that was well under

stood at the time. Heller , again, provides a helpful example. Heller did not hold that the right to keep and bear arms means that everyone has the ri ght to keep and bear every type of weaponry in all places and at all times. Instead, it held that the Second Amendment protects a known right that was understood to have defined dimensions. 554 U. S., at 626–628. Following Heller ’s lead, we must ask whether the Free Exercise Clause protects a right that was known at the time

——————

33 See, e.g. , Del. Declaration of Rights §3 (1776), in The Complete Bill of Rights 15 (N. Cogan ed. 1997) (Cogan) (“That all persons professing the Christian religion ought forever to enjoy equal rights and privileges in this state” (emphasis added)); Md. Declaration of Rights, Art. 33 (1776), in id., at 17 (“[A]ll persons professi ng the christian religion are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty” (emphasis added)); N. Y. Const., Art. XXXVIII (1777), in id ., at 26 (“[T]he free Ex

ercise and Enjoyment of religi ous Profession and Worship, without Dis

crimination or Preference , shall forever hereafter be allowed within this State to all Mankind” (emphasis adde d)); S. C. Const., Art. VIII, §1 (1790), in id ., at 41 (“The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profes

sion and worship, without discrimination or preference , shall, forever hereafter, be allowed within this state to all mankind” (emphasis added)).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 29 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment of adoption to have defined dimensions. But in doing so, we must keep in mind that ther e is a presumption that the words of the Constitution are to be interpreted in accord

ance with their “normal and ordinary” sense. Id. , at 576 (internal quotation marks omitted). Anyone advocating a different reading must overcome that presumption.

B 1 What was the free-exercise right understood to mean when the Bill of Rights was ratified? And in particular, was it clearly understood that the right simply required equal treatment for religious and secular conduct? When Smith was decided, scholars had no t devoted much attention to the original meaning of the Free Exercise Clause, and the parties’ briefs ignored this issue, as did the opinion of the Court. Since then, however, the historical record has been plumbed in detail, 34 and we are now in a good position to

——————

34 See, e.g., McConnell, The Origins and Hi storical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion, 103 Harv. L. Rev. 1409 (1990) (McConnell, Or

igins); McConnell, Free Exercise Revisionism 1109; McConnell, Freedom From Persecution or Protection of th e Rights of Conscience?: A Critique of Justice Scalia’s Hi storical Arguments in City of Boerne v. Flores , 39 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 819 (1998) (McConnell, Freedom From Persecution); Hamburger, A Constitutional Right of Religious Exemption: An Histori

cal Perspective, 60 Geo. Wash. L. Re v. 915 (1992) (Hamburger, Religious Exemption); Hamburger, More Is Less, 90 Va. L. Rev. 835 (2004) (Ham

burger, More Is Less); Laycock, Religious Liberty as Liberty, 7 J. Contemp. Legal Issues 313 (1996); Brad ley, Beguiled: Free Exercise Exemp

tions and the Siren Song of Liberalism, 20 Hofstra L. Rev. 245 (1991); Campbell, Note, A New Approach to Nineteenth Centu ry Religious Ex

emption Cases, 63 Stan. L. Rev. 973 (2011) (Campbell, A New Approach); Kmiec, The Original Understanding of the Free Exercise Clause and Re

ligious Diversity, 59 UMKC L. Rev. 591 (1991); Lash, The Second Adop

tion of the Free Exercise Clause: Re ligious Exemptions Under the Four

teenth Amendment, 88 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1106 (1994); Lombardi, Nineteenth-Century Free Exercise Ju risprudence and the Challenge ofA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 30 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment examine how the free-exercise right was understood when the First Amendment was adopted. By that date, the right to religious liberty already had a long, rich, and complex history in this country. What ap

pears to be the first “free exercise” provision was adopted in 1649. Prompted by Lord Baltimore, 35 the Maryland Assem

bly enacted a provision protecting the right of all Christians to engage in “the free exercise” of religion. 36 Rhode Island’s 1663 Charter extended the right to all. See Charter of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (1663), in Cogan 34. Early colonial charters and agreements in Carolina, Delaware, New Jersey, New Yo rk, and Pennsylvania also recognized the right to free exercise, 37 and by 1789, every

—————— Polygamy: The Relevance of Ninet eenth-Century Cases and Commen

taries for Contemporary Debates About Free Exercise Exemptions, 85 Ore. L. Rev. 369 (2006) (Lombardi, Free Exercise); Muñoz, The Original Meaning of the Free Exercise Clause : The Evidence From the First Con

gress, 31 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 1083 (2008) (Muñoz, Original Mean

ing); Nestor, Note, The Original Mean ing and Significance of Early State Provisos to the Free Exercise of Relig ion, 42 Harv. J. L. & Pub. Pol’y 971 (2019) (Nestor); M. Nussbaum, Liberty of Conscience 120–130 (2008); Walsh, The First Free Exercise Case, 73 Geo. Wash. L. Rev. 1 (2004) (Walsh).

35 McConnell, Origins 1425 (describing Lord Baltimore’s directive to the new Protestant governor and councilors of Maryland to refrain from interfering with the “fre e exercise” of Christians, particularly Roman Catholics).

36 Act Concerning Religion (1649), in Cogan 17; see also McConnell, Origins 1425.

37 See Second Charter of Carolina (1665), in Cogan 27–28 (recognizing the right of persons to “freely and qu ietly have and enjoy . . . their Judg

ments and Consciences, in Matters of Religion” and declaring that “no Person . . . shall be in any way molested, punished, disquieted, or called in Question, for any Differences in Opinion, or Practice in Matters of re

ligious Concernments, who do not actu ally disturb the Civil Peace”); Charter of Delaware, Art. I (1701), in id., at 15 (ensuring “[t]hat no per

son . . . who shall confess and acknowledge One Almighty God . . . shall be in any case molested or prejudiced, in his . . . person or estate, because of his . . . consciencious persuasion or practice, nor . . . to do or suffer anyA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 31 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment State except Connecticut had a constitutional provision pro

tecting religious liberty. McCo nnell, Origins 1455. In fact, the Free Exercise Clause had more analogs in State Consti

tutions than any other individual right. See Calabresi, Agudo, & Dore, State Bills of Rights in 1787 and 1791: What Individual Rights Are Really Deeply Rooted in American History and Tradition? 85 S. Cal. L. Rev. 1451, 1463–1464,

—————— other act or thing, contrary to their religious persuasion”); Concession and Agreement of the Lords Proprietor s of the Province of New Caesarea, or New-Jersey (1664), in id ., at 23 (declaring the right of all persons to “freely and fully have and enjoy . . . their Judgments and Consciences in matters of Religion throughout the sa id Province” and ensuring “[t]hat no person . . . at any Time shall be any ways molested, punished, disqui

eted or called in question for any Di fference in Opinion or Practice in matter of Religious Concernments, wh o do not actually disturb the civil Peace of the said Province”); Conce ssions and Agreements of West NewJersey, ch. XVI (1676), in id ., at 24 (providing that “no Person . . . shall be any ways upon any pretence whats oever, called in Question, or in the least punished or hurt, either in Pe rson, Estate, or Pr iviledge, for the sake of his Opinion, Judgment, Faith or Worship towards God in Matters of Religion”); Laws of West New-Jersey, Art. X (1681), ibid. (“That Lib

erty of Conscience in Matters of Faith and Worship towards God, shall be granted to all People within th e Province aforesaid; who shall live peacably and quietly therein”); Fundamental Constitutions for East New-Jersey, Art. XVI (1683), ibid. (“All Persons living in the Province who confess and acknowledge the on e Almighty and Eternal God, and holds themselves obliged in Conscien ce to live peacably and quietly in a civil Society, shall in no way be mole sted or prejudged for their Religious Perswasions and Exercise in matters of Faith and Worship”); New York Act Declaring . . . Rights & Priviledges (1691), in id ., at 25 (“That no Per

son . . . shall at any time be any wa y molested, punished, disturbed, dis

quieted or called in question for any Difference in Opinion, or matter of Religious Concernment, who do not und er that pretence disturb the Civil Peace of the Province”); Charter of Privileges Granted by William Penn (1701), in id ., at 31–32 (declaring that “no Person . . . who shall confess and acknowledge One almighty God . . . and profess . . . themselves obliged to live quietly under the Civ il Government, shall be in any Case molested or prejudiced . . . because of . . . their consciencious [ sic ] Per

suasion or Practice, nor . . . suffer any other Act or Thing, contrary to their religious Persuasion”).32 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 1472–1473 (2012). In all of those State Constitutions, free

dom of religion enjoyed broad pr otection, and the right “was universally said to be an unalienable right.” McConnell, Origins 1456. 38

——————

38 See infra , at 34, and n. 43; N. J. Cons t., Art. XVIII (1776), in Cogan 25 (“T HAT no Person shall ever within this Colony be deprived of the in

estimable Privilege of worshipping Almighty G OD in a Manner agreeable to the Dictates of his own Conscien ce; nor under any Pretence whatso

ever compelled to attend any Place of Worship contrary to his own Faith and Judgment”); N. C. Decl. of Rights §XIX (1776), in id., at 30 (“That all Men have a natural and unalienable Right to worship Almighty God ac

cording to the Dictates of their own Conscience”); Pa. Const., Declaration of Rights of the Inhabitants of the State of Pa., Art. II (1776), in id., at 32 (“That all men have a natural and unalienable right to worship Al

mighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences and under

standing: And that no man ought to or of right can be compelled to attend any religious worship, or erect or su pport any place of worship, or main

tain any ministry, contrary to, or ag ainst, his own free will and consent: Nor can any man, who acknowledges the being of a God, be justly de

prived or abridged of any civil right as a citizen, on account of his reli

gious sentiments or peculiar mode of religious worship: And that no au

thority can or ought to be vested in , or assumed by any power whatever, that shall in any case interfere with, or in any manner controul, the right of conscience in the free exercise of religious worship”); Va. Declaration of Rights, Art. XVI (1776), in id., at 44 (“THAT religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free ex ercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practise Christian forbearance, love, and charity, towards each other”); see also Vt. Const., ch. 1, §3 (1777), in id., at 41 (“T HAT all Men have a natural and unalienable Right to worship A LMIGHTY G OD according to the Dic

tates of their own Consciences and Un derstanding . . . and that no Man ought or of Right can be compelled to attend any religious Worship, or erect, or support any Place of Wors hip, or maintain any Minister con

trary to the Dictates of his Consci ence; nor can any Man who professes the Protestant Religion, be justly depr ived or abridged of any civil Right, as a Citizen, on Account of his religious Sentiment, or peculiar Mode of religious Worship, and that no Authorit y can, or ought to be vested in, or assumed by any Power whatsoever, that shall in any Case interfere with, or in any Manner control the Rights of Conscience, in the free ExerciseA LITO , J., concurring in judgment A

, 33

Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment

2 What was this right understood to protect? In seeking to discern that meaning, it is easy to get lost in the voluminous discussion of religious liberty that occurred during the long period from the first British settlements to the adoption of the Bill of Rights. Many different political figures, religious leaders, and others spoke and wrote about religious liberty and the relationship between the authority of civil govern

ments and religious bodies. The works of a variety of think

ers were influential, and views on religious liberty were in

formed by religion, philosophy, historical experience, particular controversies and issues, and in no small meas

ure by the practical task of uniting the Nation. The picture is complex. For present purposes, we can narrow our focus and con

centrate on the circumstances that relate most directly to the adoption of the Free Exercise Clause. As has often been recounted, critical state ratify ing conventions approved the Constitution on the understanding that it would be amended to provide express protection for certain funda

mental rights, 39 and the right to religious liberty was un

questionably one of those rights. As noted, it was expressly protected in 12 of the 13 State Constitutions, and these state constitutional provisions provide the best evidence of the scope of the right embodied in the First Amendment. When we look at these provisions, we see one predomi

nant model. This model extends broad protection for reli

gious liberty but expressly provides that the right does not protect conduct that would endanger “the public peace” or “safety.”

—————— of religious Worship”).

39 See McDonald v. Chicago , 561 U. S. 742, 769 (2010); see also Creat

ing the Bill of Rights 281, 282 (H. Ve it., K. Bowling, & C. Bickford eds. 1991); 1 A. Kelly, W. Harbison, & H. Belz, The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development 110, 118 (7th ed. 1991).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 34 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment This model had deep roots in early colonial charters. It appeared in the Rhode Island Charter of 1663, 40 the Second Charter of Carolina in 1665, 41 and the New York Act De

claring Rights & Priviledges in 1691. 42 By the founding, more than half of the State Constitu

tions contained free-exercise provisions subject to a “peace and safety” carveout or something similar. The Georgia Constitution is a good example. It provided that “[a]ll per

sons whatever shall have the free exercise of their religion; provided it be not repugnant to the peace and safety of the State.” Ga. Const., Art. LVI (1777), in Cogan 16 (emphasis added). The founding era Constitutions of Delaware, Mar

yland, Massachusetts, New Ha mpshire, New York, Rhode Island, and South Carolina all contained broad protections for religious exercise, subje ct to limited peace-and-safety
carveouts. 43

——————

40 See Charter of Rhode Island and Pr ovidence Plantations (1663), in Cogan 34 (protecting the free exercise of religion so long as residents “do not Actually disturb the Civil Peace of Our said Colony” and “Behav[e] themselves Peaceably and Quietly, An d not Using This Liberty to Licen

tiousness and Prophaneness; nor to the Civil Injury, or outward Disturb

ance of others” (emphasis deleted)).

41 See Second Charter of Carolina (1665), in id., at 27–28 (guaranteeing free exercise to persons “who do not actually disturb the Civil Peace” and who “behav[e] themselves peaceably, and [do] not us[e] this Liberty to Licentiousness, nor to the Civil Injury, or outward Disturbance of oth

ers”).

42 New York Act Declaring . . . Ri ghts & Priviledges (1691), in id., at 25 (protecting the right to free exercise for all persons “who do not under that pretence disturb the Civil Pe ace” and who “beh av[e] themselves peaceably, quietly, modestly and Religiously, and [do] not us[e] this Lib

erty to Licentiousness, nor to the civil Injury or outward Disturbance of others”).

43 Del. Declaration of Rights §§2–3 (1776), in id., at 15 (“That all men have a natural and unalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own conscien ces and understandings . . . . That all persons professing the Christian religion ought forever to enjoy equal rights and privileges in this state, unless, under colour of religion, any35 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment

——————
man disturb the peace, the happiness or safety of society ” (emphasis added)); Md. Declaration of Rights, Art. 33 (1776), in id., at 17 (“That as it is the duty of every man to wors hip God in such manner as he thinks most acceptable to him, all persons professing the christian religion are equally entitled to protection in th eir religious liberty, wherefore no per

son ought by any law to be molested in his person or estate on account of his religious persuasion or profession, or for his religious practice, unless under colour of religion any man shall disturb the good order, peace or safety of the state, or shall infringe the laws of mora lity, or injure others, in their natural, civil or religious rights” (emphasis added)); Mass. Const., pt. I, Art. II (1780), in id., at 20–21 (“It is the right as well as the duty of all men in society, publickly, and at stated seasons, to worship the SUPREME BEING , the Great Creator and Preserver of the Uni

verse. And no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained, in his per

son, liberty, or estate, for worshipping GOD in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of hi s own conscience; or for his religious profession or sentiments ; provided he doth not disturb the publick peace, or obstruct others in their religious worship ” (emphasis added)); N. H. Const., pt. I, Art. V (1783), in id., at 22–23 (“Every individual has a nat

ural and unalienable right to worship GOD according to the dictates of his own conscience, and reason; and no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained in his person, liberty or estate for worshipping GOD in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience, . . . provided he doth not disturb the public peace, or disturb others in their religious worship ” (emphasis added)) ; N. Y. Const., Art. XXXVIII (1777), in id., at 26 (“[T]he free Exercise an d Enjoyment of religious Pro

fession and Worship, without Discrimi nation or Preference, shall forever hereafter be allowed within this State to all Mankind. Provided , That the Liberty of Conscience hereby granted, shall not be so construed, as
to excuse Acts of Licentiousness , or justify Practices inconsistent with the Peace or Safety of this State ” (some emphasis added)); Charter of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (1663), in id., at 34 (guaranteeing free exercise for matters that “do not Actually disturb the Civil Peace of Our said Colony ” so long as persons “[b]ehav[e] themselves Peaceably and Quietly, And [do] not Us[e] This Liberty to Licentiousness and Prophane

ness; nor to the Civil Injury, or outw ard Disturbance of others” (some emphasis added)); S. C. Cons t., Art. VIII, §1 (1790), in id., at 41 (“The free exercise and enjoyment of religio us profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall, forever hereafter, be allowed within this state to all mankind; provided th at the liberty of conscience thereby declared shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness , or justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of this state ” (em

phasis added))

.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment A

, 36 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment The predominance of this model is highlighted by its use in the laws governing the Northwest Territory. In the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, the Continental Congress provided that “[n]o person, demeaning himself in a peacea

ble and orderly manner , shall ever be molested on account of his mode of worship, or religious sentiments, in the said territory.” Art. I (emphasis ad ded). After the ratification of the Constitution, the First Congress used similar lan

guage in the Northwest Ordinance of 1789. See Act of Aug. 7, 1789, 1 Stat. 52 (reaffirming Art. I of Northwest Ordi

nance of 1787). Since the First Congress also framed and approved the Bill of Rights, we have often said that its ap

parent understanding of the scope of those rights is entitled to great respect. See, e.g., Town of Greece v. Galloway , 572 U. S. 565, 575–578 (2014); Harmelin v. Michigan , 501 U. S. 957, 980 (1991) (opinion of Scalia, J.); Marsh v. Chambers

, 463 U. S. 783, 786–792 (1983); Carroll v. United States , 267 U. S. 132, 150–151 (1925).

3 The model favored by Congress and the state legisla

tures—providing broad protection for the free exercise of re

ligion except where public “pea ce” or “safety” would be en

dangered—is antithetical to Smith. If, as Smith held, the free-exercise right does not require any religious exemp

tions from generally applicable laws, it is not easy to imag

ine situations in which a p ublic-peace-or-safety carveout would be necessary. Legislat ures enact generally applica

ble laws to protect public peace and safety. If those laws are thought to be sufficient to address a particular type of conduct when engaged in for a secular purpose, why wouldn’t they also be sufficien t to address the same type of conduct when carried out for a religious reason? Smith ’s defenders have no good answer. Their chief re

sponse is that the free-exerci se provisions that included these carveouts were tantamount to the Smith rule becauseA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 37 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment any conduct that is generally prohibited or generally re

quired can be regarded as necessary to protect public peace or safety. See City of Boerne , 521 U. S., at 539 (Scalia, J., concurring in part) (“At the time these provisos were enacted, keeping ‘peace’ and ‘order’ seems to have meant, precisely, obeying the laws”). This argument gives “public peace and safety” an unnat

urally broad interpretation. Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dic

tionary defined “peace” as: “1. Respite from war. . . . 2. Quiet from suits or disturbances. . . . 3. Rest from any com

motion. 4. Stil[l]ness from riots or tumults. . . . 5. Reconcil

iation of differences. . . . 6. A state not hostile. . . . 7. Rest; quiet; content; freedom from terrour; heavenly rest. . . .” 2 Johnson. 44 In ordinary usage, the term “safety” was understood to mean: “1. Freedom from danger. . . . 2. Exemption from hurt. 3. Preservation from hurt. . . .” Ibid

. 45 When “peace” and “safety” are understood in this way, it cannot be said that every violation of every law imperils public “peace” or “safety.” In 1791 (and today), violations of

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44 See also 2 Webster (“1. In a general sense , a state of quiet or tran

quility; freedom from disturbance or ag itation. . . . 2. Freedom from war with a foreign nation; public quiet. 3. Freedom from internal commotion or civil war. 4. Freedom from private quarrels, suits or disturbance. 5. Freedom from agitation or disturbance by the passions, as from fear, ter

ror, anger, anxiety or the like; quie tness of mind; tranquillity; calmness; quiet of conscience. . . . 6. Heavenly rest; the happiness of heaven. . . . 7. Harmony; concord; a state of reconcilia tion between parties at variance. 8. Public tranquilit y; that quiet, order and se curity which is guarauteed by the laws; as, to keep the peace ; to break the peace ”); 2 Ash (“Rest, quiet, respite from war, respite fr om tumult; reconciliation, an accommo

dation of differences”).

45 See also Bailey (“Freedom from Da nger, Custody, Security”); 2 Ash (“Security from danger, freedom from hurt; custody, security from es

cape”); 2 Webster (“[1.] Freedom from danger or hazard . . . . 2. Exemp

tion from hurt, injury or loss. . . . 3. Preservation from escape; close cus

tody. . . . 4. Preservation from hurt”).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 38 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment many laws do not threaten “war,” “disturbances,” “commo

tion,” “riots,” “terrour,” “danger,” or “hurt.” Blackstone cat

alogs numerous violations that do not threaten any such harms, including “cursing”; 46 refusing to pay assessments for “the repairs of sea banks and sea walls” and the “cleans

ing of rivers, public streams, ditches and other conduits”; 47 “retaining a man’s hired servant before his time is ex

pired”; 48 an attorney’s failure to show up for a trial; 49 the unauthorized “solemniz[ing of a] marriage in any other place besides a church, or p ublic chapel wherein banns have been usually published”; 50 “transporting and seducing our artists to settle abroad”; 51 engaging in the conduct of “a common scold”; 52 and “exercis[ing] a trade in any town, without having previously served as an apprentice for seven years.” 53 In contrast to these violatio ns, Blackstone lists “offences against the public peace.” 4 Commentaries on the Laws of England 142–153 (1769). Those include: riotous assem

bling of 12 persons or more; unlawful hunting; anonymous threats and demands; destruction of public floodgates, locks, or sluices on a navigable river; public fighting; riots or unlawful assemblies; “tumultuous” petitioning; forcible entry or detainer; riding or “going armed” with dangerous or unusual weapons; spreading false news to “make discord between the king and nobility, or concerning any great man of the realm”; spreading “false and pretended” prophecies to disturb the peace; provoking breaches of the peace; and

——————

46 4 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 59 (1769).

47 3 id., at 73–74 (1768).

48 Id ., at 141–142.

49 Id. , at 164.

50 4 id., at 163.

51 Id., at 160 (emphasis deleted).

52 Id., at 169 (emphasis deleted).

53 Id., at 160 (emphasis deleted).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 39 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment libel “to provoke . . . wrath, or expose [an individual] to pub

lic hatred, contempt, and ridicule.” Ibid. (emphasis de

leted); see also McConnell, Freedom from Persecution 835– 836. These offenses might inform what constitutes actual or threatened breaches of public peace or safety in the ordi

nary sense of those terms. 54 But the ordinary meaning of offenses that threaten public peace or safety must be stretched beyond the breaking point to encompass all viola

tions of any law. 55

——————

54 Some late 18th century and early 19th century dictionaries provided special definitions of the term “peace” as used in the law, and these def

initions fit the offenses on Blackstone’s list. See, e.g. , 1 Johnson (6th ed. 1785) (“That general security and quiet which the king warrants to his subjects, and of which he therefore avenges the violation; every forcible injury is a breach of the king’s peace” (emphasis deleted)); 5 G. Jacob, Law-Dictionary (1811) (“[P]articularly in law, [‘peace’] intends a quiet behaviour towards the King and his Subjects”); Bailey (defining “peace” in the “ Law Sense ” as “quiet and inoffensive Behaviour towards King and Subject”).

55 Such an interpretation would also clash with the way in which the scope of state legislative power was understood. If any violation of the law had been regarded as a breach of public peace or safety, there would have been no need for the lawmaking authority of a state legislature to extend any further, but there is no ev idence that state legislative author

ity was understood that way. New York’s 1777 Constitution demon

strates the point. As noted above, it protected free exercise unless a per

son invoked that protection to “excus e Acts of Licentiousness, or justify Practices inconsistent with the Peace or Safety of this State.” Art. XXXVIII, in Cogan 26. But the New Yo rk Constitution authorized the legislature to enact laws to further broader aims, including “good gov

ernment, welfare, and prosperity.” Art. XIX, in 5 Federal and State Con

stitutions 2633 (F. Thorpe ed. 1909). That authority obviously goes well beyond the prohibition of “Practices inconsistent with” the “Peace” and “Safety” (or “Licentiousness”). S ee McConnell, Freedom from Persecu

tion 835–836. In like manner, State Constitutions and other declara

tions of rights commonly proclaimed that government should pursue broader goals, such as the promotio n of “prosperity” and “happiness.” See Nestor, Table III: Comparing the Provisos to the Scope of Legislative Power (online source archived at www.supremecourt.gov).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 40 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment

C That the free-exercise right included the right to certain religious exemptions is strongly supported by the practice of the Colonies and States. When there were important clashes between generally applicable laws and the religious practices of particular groups, colonial and state legisla

tures were willing to grant exemptions—even when the generally applicable laws served critical state interests. Oath exemptions are illustrative. Oath requirements were considered “indispensable” to civil society because they were thought to ensure that individuals gave truthful testimony and fulfilled commitments. McConnell, Origins 1467. Quakers and members of some other religious groups refused to take oaths, ibid. , and therefore a categorical oath requirement would have resulted in the complete exclusion of these Americans from important civic activities, such as testifying in court and voting, see ibid. Tellingly, that is not what happened. In the 1600s, Car

olina allowed Quakers to enter a pledge rather than swear

ing an oath. Ibid. In 1691, New York permitted Quakers to give testimony after giving an affirmation. Ibid. Massa

chusetts did the same in 1743. Id., at 1467–1468. In 1734, New York also allowed Quakers to qualify to vote by mak

ing an affirmation, and in 1740, Georgia granted an exemp

tion to Jews, allowing them to omit the phrase “ ‘on the faith of a Christian’ ” from the State’s naturalization oath. Id., at 1467. By 1789, almost all States had passed oath exemp

tions. Id. , at 1468. Some early State Constitutions and declarations of rights formally provided oath exempt ions for religious objectors. For instance, the Maryland Declaration of Rights of 1776 declared that Quakers, Mennonites, and members of some other religious groups “ought to be allowed to make their solemn affirmation” instead of an oath. §36, in Cogan 18. Similarly, the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 permit

-A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 41 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment ted Quakers holding certain government positions to de

cline to take the prescribed oath of office, allowing affirma

tions instead. Pt. II, ch. VI, Art. I, in id., at 22. The Federal Constitution likewise permits federal and state officials to make either an “Oath or Affirmation, to support this Con

stitution.” Art. VI, cl. 3 (emphasis added); see also Art. I, §3, cl. 6; Art. II, §1, cl. 8. Military conscription provides an even more revealing ex

ample. In the Colonies and later in the States, able-bodied men of a certain age were requi red to serve in the militia,

see Heller , 554 U. S., at 595–596, but Quakers, Mennonites, and members of some other religious groups objected to mi

litia service on religious grounds, see McConnell, Origins 1468. The militia was regarded as essential to the security of the State and the preservation of freedom, see Heller , 554 U. S., at 597–598, but colonial governments nevertheless granted religious exemptions, see McConnell, Origins 1468. Rhode Island, Maryland, North Carolina, and New Hamp

shire did so in the founding era. Ibid. In 1755, New York permitted a conscientious obje ctor to obtain an exemption if he paid a fee or sent a substitute. Ibid. Massachusetts adopted a similar law two years later, and Virginia followed suit in 1776. Ibid. , and n. 297. The Continental Congress also granted exemptions to re

ligious objectors because conscri ption would do “violence to their consciences.” Resolution of July 18, 1775, in 2 Jour

nals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, p. 189 (W. Ford ed. 1905) (quoted in McConnell, Origins 1469, and n. 299). This decision is especially revealing because during that time the Continental Army was periodically in desper

ate need of soldiers, 56 the very survival of the new Nation

——————

56 Mayer, The Continental Army, in A Companion to th e American Rev

olution 309 (J. Greene & J. Pole eds. 2000); R. Wright, The Continental Army 153–154, 163 (1983).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 42 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment often seemed in danger, 57 and the Members of Congress faced bleak personal prospe cts if the war was lost. 58 Yet despite these stakes, exemptions were granted. Colonies with established churches also permitted non

members to decline to pay sp ecial taxes dedicated to the support of ministers of the established church. McConnell, Origins 1469. Massachusetts and Connecticut exempted Baptists and Quakers in 1727. Ibid. Virginia provided ex

emptions to Huguenots in 1700, German Lutherans in 1730, and dissenters from the Church of England in 1776. Ibid. ; see also S. Cobb, The Rise of Religious Liberty in America 98, 492 (1902). Beginning in 1692, New Hamp

shire exempted those who could prove they were “ ‘conscien

tiously’ ” of a “ ‘different persuasion,’ ” regularly attended their own religious services, and contributed financially to their faith. McConnell

, Origins 1469

. Various other religious exemptions were also provided. North Carolina and Maryland granted exemptions from the requirement that individuals remove their hats in court, a gesture that Quakers viewed as an impermissible showing of respect to a secular authority. Id. , at 1471–1472. And Rhode Island exempted Jews from some marriage laws. Id.

, at 1471. In an effort to dismiss the significance of these legislative

——————

57 See The Oxford Companion to Am erican Military History 606–608, 611 (J. Chambers ed. 1999).

58 See Declaration of Independence ¶ 31 (“[W]e mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor”); see also P. Maier, American Scripture 152–153 (1997); Boyd, The Declaration of Independ

ence: The Mystery of the Lost Original, 100 Pa. Mag. Hist. & Bio. 438, 445 (1976); L. Montross, The Reluctan t Rebels 165 (1970); E. Burnett, The Continental Congress 196–197 (1941). Of the 56 signers of the Dec

laration of Independence, 9 were take n as prisoners of war; 2 had sons who died; 3 had sons who were taken captive; 9 had their homes de

stroyed; and 13 saw their homes occupied, confiscated, or damaged. M. Novak, On Two Wings: Humble Faith and Common Sense at the Ameri

can Founding 157–158 (2002).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 43 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment exemptions, it has been argued that they show only what the Constitution permits, not what it requires. City of Boerne , 521 U. S., at 541 (opinion of Scalia, J.). But legis

latures provided those accommodations before the concept of judicial review took hold, and their actions are therefore strong evidence of the founding era’s understanding of the free-exercise right. See McConnell

, Free Exercise Revision

ism 1119. Cf. Heller , 554 U. S., at 600–603 (looking to state constitutions that preceded the adoption of the Second Amendment).

D
Defenders of Smith have advanced historical arguments of their own, but they are unconvincing, and in any event, plainly insufficient to overcome the ordinary meaning of the constitutional text.

1 One prominent argument points to language in some founding-era charters and constitutions prohibiting laws or government actions that were taken “for” or “on account” of religion. See City of Boerne , 521 U. S., at 538–539 (opinion of Scalia, J.). That phrasing, it is argued, reaches only measures that target religion, not neutral and generally ap

plicable laws. This argument has many flaws. No such language appears in the Free Exercise Clause, and in any event, the argument rests on a crabbed reading of the words “for” or “on account of ” religion. As Professor McConnell has explained, “[i]f a member of the Native American Church is arrested for ingesting peyote during a religious ceremony, then he surely is molested ‘for’ or ‘on account of ’ his religious practice—even though the law un

der which he is arrested is neutral and generally applica

ble.” Freedom From Persecution 834. This argument also ignores the full text of many of the provisions on which it relies. Id., at 833–834. While someA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 44 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment protect against government a ctions taken “for” or “on ac

count of ” religion, they do not stop there. Instead, they go on to provide broader protection for religious liberty. See,
e.g., Maryland Act Concerning Religion (1649), in Cogan 17 (guaranteeing residents not be “troubled . . . in the free ex

ercise [of religion]”); New York Constitution (1777), in id.

, at 26 (guaranteeing “the free Exercise and Enjoyment of re

ligious Profession and Worship”).

2 Another argument advanced by Smith ’s defenders relies on the paucity of early cases “refusing to enforce a generally applicable statute because of its failure to make accommo

dation,” City of Boerne , 521 U. S., at 542 (opinion of Scalia, J.). If exemptions were thou ght to be constitutionally re

quired, they contend, we would see many such cases. There might be something to this argument if there were a great many cases denying exemptions and few granting them, but the fact is that diligent research has found only a handful of cases going either way. Commentators have dis

cussed the dearth of cases, and as they note, there are many possible explanations. 59 Early 19th century legislation im

posed only limited restrictions on private conduct, and this minimized the chances of conflict between generally appli

cable laws and religious practices. The principal conflicts that arose—involving oaths, conscription, and taxes to sup

port an established church—were largely resolved by state constitutional provisions and laws granting exemptions. And the religious demographics of the time decreased the likelihood of conflicts. The population was overwhelmingly

——————

59 See Barclay, The Historical Origin s of Judicial Religious Exemp

tions, 96 Notre Dame L. Rev. 55, 69–73 (2020); McConnell, Free Exercise Revisionism 1118; Campbell, A New Approach 978, 987; Lombardi, Free Exercise 385; Campbell, Religious Neutrality in the Early Republic, 24 Regent U. L. Rev. 311, 314–315, n. 20 (2012).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 45 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment Christian and Protestant, the major Protestant denomina

tions made up the great bulk of the religious adherents, 60 and other than with respect to the issue of taxes to support an established church, it is hard to think of conflicts be

tween the practices of the members of these denominations and generally applicable laws t hat a state legislature might have enacted. Members of minority religions are most likely to en

counter such conflicts, and the largest minority group, the Quakers, who totaled about 10% of religious adherents, 61 had received exemptions for the practices that conflicted with generally applicable laws. As will later be shown, see infra , at 46–50, the small number of religious-exemption cases that occurred during the early 19th century involved members of what were then tiny religious groups—such as Catholics, Jews, and Covenanters. 62 Given the size of these groups, one would not expect a large number of cases. And where cases arose, the courts’ decisions may not have al

ways been reported. Barclay, The Historical Origins of Ju

dicial Religious Exemptions, 96 Notre Dame L. Rev. 55, 70 (2020).

3 When the body of potentially relevant cases is examined, they provide little support for Smith ’s interpretation of the

——————

60 W. Newman & P. Halvorson, Atlas of American Religion 18 (2000).

61 Ibid.

62 The Covenanters originated in Sc otland, where they opposed the Stuart kings’ right to rule over th e Presbyterian Church. See Emery, Church and State in the Early Repu blic: The Covenanters’ Radical Cri

tique, 25 J. L. & Religion 487, 488 (2009) . They immigrated to the United States and, in the 1790s, organized a branch of the Reformed Presbyter

ian Church. Id., at 489. Members ascribe to two foundational docu

ments—the Scottish National Covena nt of 1638 and the Solemn League and Covenant of 1643—and believe in the supremacy of God over man in both civil and eccles iastical matters. Id., at 448; see also J. McFeeters, The Covenanters in America: The Vo ice of Their Testimony on Present Moral Issues 57 (1892).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 46 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment free-exercise right. Not only are these decisions few in number, but they reached mixed results. In addition, some are unreasoned; some provid e ambiguous explanations; and many of the cases denying exemptions were based on grounds that do not support Smith. The most influential early case granting an exemption

was People v. Philips , 1 W. L. J. 109, 112–113 (Gen. Sess., N. Y. 1813), where the court held that a Catholic priest could not be compelled to testify about a confession. The priest’s refusal, the court reasoned, was protected by the state constitutional right to th e free exercise of religion and did not fall within the exception for “acts of licentiousness” and “practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of th[e] State.” 63 This, of course, is exactly the understanding of the free-exercise right that is seen in the founding era State Constitutions. Although Philips was not officially reported, knowledge of the decision appears to have spread widely. Four years later, another New York court implicitly reaffirmed the principle Philips recognized but found the decision inappli

cable because the Protestant minister who was called to tes

tify did not feel a religious obligation to refuse. See Smith ’ s Case , 2 N. Y. City-Hall Recorder 77, 80, and n. (1817); McConnell, Origins 1505–1506; Walsh 40–41. In 1827, a South Carolina court relied on Philips as sup

port for its decision to grant an exemption from a state law relied on to bar the testimony of a witness who denied a belief in punishment after death for testifying falsely, and the State’s newly constituted high court approved that opin

ion. Farnandis v. Henderson , 1 Carolina L. J. 202, 213, 214 ( 1827). 64 In Commonwealth v. Cronin , 2 Va. Cir. 488, 498, 500, 505

——————

63 Privileged Communications to Clergymen, 1 Cath. Law. 199, 207– 209 (1955).

64 See also Walsh 41; Campbell, A New Approach 992, n. 99; Lombardi, Free Exercise 408, and n. 152.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 47 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment (1855), a Virginia court followed Philips and held that a priest’s free-exercise right required an exemption from the general common law rule compelling a witness to “disclose all he may know” when giving testimony. On the other side of the ledger, the most prominent oppo

nent of exemptions was John Bannister Gibson of the Penn

sylvania Supreme Court. Today, Gibson is best known for his dissent in Eakin v . Raub , 12 Serg. & Rawle 330, 355– 356 (1825), which challenged John Marshall’s argument for judicial review in Marbury v . Madison , 1 Cranch 137 (1803). See McConnell, Origins 1507. Three years after Eakin , Gibson’s dissent in Commonwealth v. Lesher , 17 Serg. & Rawle 155 (Pa. 1828), advanced a related argument against decisions granting religious exemptions. Gibson agreed that the state constituti onal provision protecting re

ligious liberty conferred the righ t to do or forbear from do

ing any act “not prejudicial to the public weal,” but he ar

gued that judges had no autho rity to override legislative judgments about what the public weal required. Id., at 160–161 (emphasis deleted). Three years later, he made a similar argument in dicta in Philips’s Executors v. Gratz , 2 Pen. & W. 412, 412–413 (Pa. 1831), where a Jewish plaintiff had taken a non-suit (agreed to a dismissal) in a ci vil case scheduled for trial on a Saturday. Gibson’s opinion for the Court set aside the non-suit on other grounds but rejected the plaintiff ’s reli

gious objection to trial on Saturday. Id., at 416–417. He proclaimed that a citizen’s ob ligation to the State must al

ways take precedence over any religious obligation, and he expressly registered disagreement with the New York court’s decision in Philips

. Id., at 417. In South Carolina, an exemption claim was denied in State v. Willson , 13 S. C. L. 393, 394–397 (1823), where the court refused to exempt a member of the Covenanters reli

gious movement from jury service. Because Covenanters opposed the Constitution on re ligious grounds, they refusedA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 48 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment to engage in activities, such as jury service and voting, that required an oath to support th e Constitution or otherwise enlisted their participation in the Nation’s scheme of gov

ernment. 65 It is possible to read the opinion in Willson as embodying something like the Smith rule—or as concluding that granting the exemption would have opened the flood

gates and undermined public peace and safety. See 13 S. C. L., at 395 (“who could distinguish . . . between the pious asseveration of a holy man and that of an accomplished vil

lain”). But if Willson is read as rejecting religious exemp

tions, South Carolina’s recons tituted high court reversed that position in Farnandis

. 66 Other cases denying exemptions are even less helpful to Smith ’s defenders. Three decisions rejected challenges to Sunday closing laws by merchants who celebrated Satur

day as the Sabbath, but at least two of these were based on the court’s conclusion that the asserted religious belief was unfounded. See City Council of Charleston v. Benjamin , 33 S. C. L. 508, 529 (1846) (“There is . . . no violation of the Hebrew’s religion, in requiring him to cease from labor on another day than his Sabbath, if he be left free to observe

——————

65 See McFeeters, The Covenant ers in America 121–129; id., at 122 (Covenanters “must refuse upon the grounds of honor, conscience, and consistency, to be identified by oath or ballot with such a political sys

tem”); id., at 129 (Covenanters “decline to take any responsible part in the administration of civil power”); W. Gibson & A. McLeod, Reformation Principles Exhibited, by the Reformed Presbyterian Church in the United States of America 138 (1807) (“The juror voluntarily places him

self upon oath, under the direction of a law which is immoral. The Re

formed Presbytery declare this prac tice inconsistent with their Testi

mony, and warn Church-members against serving on juries under the direction of the constituted courts of law”).

66 See O’Neall, Early History of the Ju diciary of South Carolina, p. xi, in 1 Biographical Sketches of th e Bench and Bar of South Carolina (1859); Walsh 41–42 (explaining that South Carolina “dismantled” the “five-member constitutional court” that decided Willson and replaced it with a new high court—the South Carolina Court of Appeals—which con

curred in the opinion in Farnandis ).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 49 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment the latter according to his re ligion” (emphasis deleted)); Commonwealth v. Wolf , 3 Serg. & Rawle 47, 50, 51 (Pa. 1817) (“[T]he Jewish Talmud . . . asserts no such doctrine” and the objection was made “out of mere caprice”). That reasoning is contrary to a principle that Smith reaffirmed: “Repeatedly and in many different contexts, we have warned that courts must not presume to determine . . . the plausibility of a religious claim.” 494 U. S., at 887. A third Sunday closing law decision appears to rest at least in part on a similar ground. See Specht v. Common

wealth , 8 Pa. 312 (1848). The court observed that the mer

chant’s conscience rights might have been violated if his re

ligion actually required him to work on Sunday, but the court concluded that the commandment to keep holy the Sabbath had never been understood to impose “an impera

tive obligation to fill up each day of the other six with some worldly employment.” Id ., at 326. Other cases cited as denying exemptions were decided on nebulous grounds. In Stansbury v . Marks , 2 Dall. 213 (Pa. 1793), a decision of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the case report in its entirety states: “In this cause (which was tried on Saturday, the 5th of April) the defendant offered Jonas Phillips, a Jew, as a witness; but he refused to be sworn, because it was his Sabbat h. The Court, therefore, fined him £10; but the defendant, afterwards, waving the benefit of his testimony, he was discharged from the fine.” (Emphasis deleted.) What can be deduced from this cryptic summary? Was the issue mooted when the defendant waived the benefit of Phillips’s testimony? Who can tell? In Commonwealth v. Drake , 15 Mass. 161 (1818), the Su

preme Judicial Court of Massachusetts summarily affirmed the conviction of a criminal defendant who was convicted after the trial court admitted the testimony of his fellow church members before whom he had confessed. The State argued that the defendant had voluntarily confessed, that his confession was not required by any “ecclesiastical rule,”A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 50 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment
and that he had confessed “not to the church” but “to his friends and neighbours.” Id. , at 162. Because the court pro

vided no explanation of its decision, this case sheds no light on the understanding of the free-exercise right. All told, this mixed bag of antebellum decisions does little to support Smith , and extending the search past the Civil War does not advance Smith ’s cause. One of the objectives of the Fourteenth Amendment, it has been argued, was to protect the religious liberty of African-Americans in the South, where a combination of laws that did not facially tar

get religious practice had been used to suppress religious exercise by slaves. See generally Lash, The Second Adop

tion of the Free Exercise Clause: Religious Exemptions Un

der the Fourteenth Amendment, 88 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1106 (1994).

4 Some have claimed that the drafting history of the Bill of Rights supports Smith . See Brief for First Amendment Scholars as Amici Curiae 10–11; Muñoz, Original Meaning 1085. But as Professor Philip Hamburger, one of Smith ’s most prominent academic defenders, has concluded, “[w]hat any of this [history] implies about the meaning of the Free Exercise Clause is speculative.” Religious Exemp

tion 928. Here is the relevant history. The House debated a provi

sion, originally proposed by Madison, that protected the right to bear arms but included language stating that “no person, religiously scrupulous, shall be compelled to bear arms.” 1 Annals of Cong. 749, 766 (1789); see also Muñoz, Original Meaning 1112. Some Members spoke in favor ofA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 51 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment the proposal, 67 others opposed it, 68 and in the end, after add

ing the words “in person” at the end of the clause, the House adopted it. 69 The Senate, however, rejected the proposal (for reasons not provided on the public record), id ., at 1116, and the House acceded to the deletion. Those who claim that this episode supports Smith argue that the House would not have found it necessary to include this proviso in the Second Amendment if it had thought that the Free Exercise Clause already protected conscien

tious objectors from conscriptio n, Muñoz, Original Meaning 1120, but that conclusion is unfounded. Those who favored Madison’s language might have thought it necessary, not because the free-exercise right never required religious ex

emptions but because they feared that exemption from mil

itary service would be held to fall into the free-exercise right’s carveout for conduct that threatens public safety. 70 And of course, it could be argued that the willingness of the House to constitutionalize this exemption despite its poten

tial effect on national security shows the depth of the Mem

bers’ commitment to the conc ept of religious exemptions. As for the Senate’s rejection of the proviso, we have often warned against drawing inferences from Congress’s failure to adopt a legislative proposal. See Schneidewind v. ANR Pipeline Co. , 485 U. S. 293, 306 (1988) (“This Court gener

ally is reluctant to draw inferences from Congress’ failure to act”); Brecht v. Abrahamson , 507 U. S. 619, 632–633 (1993) (collecting cases). And in this instance, there are

——————

67 Hamburger, Religious Exemption 928, and n. 56 (quoting the state

ment of Rep. Boudinot).

68 Id., at 928, and n. 57 (quoting the statement of Rep. Benson).

69 Muñoz, Original Meaning 1115.

70 Several State Constitutions contained both Free Exercise Clause an

alogs and provisions protecting consci entious objectors, and this has been cited as evidence that the free-exerci se analogs did not confer any right to exemptions. See id ., at 1118–1119. This argument is unpersuasive for the reasons explained above.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 52 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment many possible explanations for what happened in the Sen

ate. The rejection of the proviso could have been due to a general objection to religious exemptions, but it could also have been based on any of the following grounds: opposition to this particular exemption, the belief that conscientious objectors were already prot ected by the Free Exercise Clause, a belief that military service fell within the public safety carveout, or the view t hat Congress should be able to decide whether to grant or wi thhold such exemptions based on its assessment of what national security required at par

ticular times.

* * * In sum, based on the text of the Free Exercise Clause and evidence about the original understanding of the free-exer

cise right, the case for Smith fails to overcome the more nat

ural reading of the text. Indeed, the case against Smith is very convincing.

V That conclusion cannot end our analysis. “We will not overturn a past decision unless there are strong grounds for doing so,” Janus v. State, County, and Municipal Employ

ees, 585 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 34), but at the same time, stare decisis is “not an inexorable command.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitte d). It “is at its weakest when we interpret the Constitu tion because our interpreta

tion can be altered only by constitutional amendment or by overruling our prior decisions.” Agostini v. Felton , 521 U. S. 203, 235 (1997). And it applies with “perhaps least force of all to decisions that wrongly denied First Amendment rights.” Janus , 585 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 34); see also Federal Election Comm’n v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc.

, 551 U. S. 449, 500 (2007) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (“This Court has not hesitated to overrule decisions offensive to the First Amendment (aA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 53 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment

fixed star in our constitutio nal constellation, if there is one)” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Citizens United

v. Federal Election Comm’n , 558 U. S. 310, 365 (2010) (over

ruling Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce , 494 U. S. 652 (1990)); West Virginia Bd. of Ed. v. Barnette , 319 U. S. 624, 642 (1943) (overruling Minersville School Dist. v . Go

bitis , 310 U. S. 586 (1940)). In assessing whether to overrule a past decision that ap

pears to be incorrect, we have considered a variety of fac

tors, and four of those weigh strongly against Smith : its rea

soning; its consistency with other decisions; the workability of the rule that it established; and developments since the decision was handed down. See Janus , 585 U. S., at ___– ___ (slip op., at 34–35). No relevant factor, including reli

ance, weighs in Smith ’s favor.

A Smith’s reasoning . As explained in detail above, Smith is a methodological outlier. It ignored the “normal and ordi

nary” meaning of the co nstitutional text, see Heller , 554 U. S., at 576, and it made no real effort to explore the un

derstanding of the free-exercise right at the time of the First Amendment’s adoption. And the Court adopted its reading of the Free Exercise Clause with no briefing on the issue from the parties or amici . Laycock, 8 J. L. & Religion, at 101. Then there is Smith ’s treatment of precedent. It looked for precedential support in strange places, and the many precedents that stood in its way received remarkably rough
treatment. Looking for a case that had endorsed its no-exemptions view, Smith turned to Gobitis , 310 U. S., at 586, a decision that Justice Scalia himself later acknowledged was “erro

neous,” Wisconsin Right to Life

, Inc ., 551 U. S., at 500–501A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 54 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment (opinion concurring in part). William Gobitas, 71 a 10-year

old fifth grader, and his 12-year-old sister Lillian refused to salute the flag during the Pledge of Allegiance because, along with other Jehovah’s Witnesses, they thought the sa

lute constituted idolatry. 310 U. S., at 591–592. 72 William’s “teacher tried to force his arm up, but William held on to his pocket and successfully resisted.” 73 The Gobitas chil

dren were expelled from school, and the family grocery was boycotted. 74 This Court upheld the children’s expulsion because, in ringing rhetoric quoted by Smith , “[c]onscientious scruples have not, in the course of the long struggle for religious tol

eration, relieved the individual from obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs.” 310 U. S., at 594; see also Smith , 494 U. S., at 879 (quoting this passage). This declaration was overblown when issued in 1940. (As noted, many religious exemptions had been granted by legislat ive bodies, and the 1940 statute instituting the peacetime draft continued that tradition by exempting conscientious objectors. Selective Training and Service Act, 54 Stat. 885, 889.) By 1990, when Smith was handed down, the pronouncement flew in the face of nearly 40 years of Supreme Court precedent. But even if all that is put aside, Smith ’s recourse to Go

bitis was surprising because the decision was overruled just three years later when three of the Justices in the majority had second thoughts. See Barnette , 319 U. S. 642; id., at 643–644 (Black and Douglas, JJ., concurring); id., at 644– 646 (Murphy, J., concurring). Turning Gobitis ’s words on

——————

71 The family name was apparently missp elled in the case caption. See Sutton, Barnette, Frankfurter, and Judicial Review, 96 Marq. L. Rev. 133, 134 (2012).

72 See also N. Feldman, Scorpions 179 (2010).

73 Ibid.

74 Id., at 180.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 55 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment their head, Barnette held that students with religious objec

tions to saluting the flag were indeed “relieved . . . from obe

dience to a general [rule] not aimed at the promotion or re

striction of religious beliefs.” Gobitis , 310 U. S., at 594. After reviving Gobitis’ s anti-exemption rhetoric, Smith turned to Reynolds v. United States , 98 U. S. 145, an 1879 decision upholding the polygamy conviction of a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Unlike Gobitis

, Reynolds at least had not been overruled, 75 but the decision was not based on anything like Smith ’s interpreta

tion of the Free Exercise Clause. It rested primarily on the proposition that the Free Exercise Clause protects beliefs, not conduct. 98 U. S., at 166–167. The Court had repudi

ated that distinction a half century before Smith was de

cided. See Cantwell , 310 U. S., at 303–304; Murdock v. Pennsylvania , 319 U. S. 105, 110–111, 117 (1943). And Smith itself agreed! See 494 U. S., at 877. The remaining pre- Sherbert cases cited by Smith actually cut against its interpretation. None was based on the rule that Smith adopted. Although these decisions ended up denying exemptions, they did so on other grounds. In Prince v. Massachusetts , 321 U. S. 158 (1944), where a Je

hovah’s Witness who enlisted a child to distribute religious literature was convicted for violating a state child labor law, the decision was based on the Court’s assessment of the strength of the State’s interest. Id ., at 159–160, 162, 169– 170; see also Yoder , 406 U. S., at 230–231 (describing the Prince Court’s rationale). In Braunfeld v. Brown , 366 U. S. 599, 601, 609 (1961) (plurality opinion), which rejected a Jewish merchant’s challenge to Pennsylvania’s Sunday closing laws, the Court balanced the competing interests. The Court attached di

minished weight to the burden imposed by the law (because

——————

75 This discussion does not suggest that Reynolds should be overruled.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 56 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment it did not require work on Saturday), id., at 606, 76 and on the other side of the balance, the Court accepted the Com

monwealth’s view that the p ublic welfare was served by providing a uniform day of rest, id ., at 608–609; see Sher

bert , 374 U. S., at 408–409 (discussing Braunfeld ). When Smith came to post- Sherbert cases, the picture did not improve. First, in order to place Sherbert

, Hobbie , and Thomas in a special category reserved for cases involving unemployment compensation, an inventive transformation was required. None of those opinions contained a hint that they were limited in that way. And since Smith itself in

volved the award of unemployment compensation benefits under a scheme that allowed individualized exemptions, it is hard to see why that case di d not fall into the same cate

gory. The Court tried to escape this problem by framing Alfred Smith’s and Galen Black’s free-exercise claims as requests for exemptions from the Oregon law criminalizing the pos

session of peyote, see 494 U. S., at 876, but neither Smith nor Black was prosecuted for that offense even though the State was well aware of what they had done. The State had the discretion to decline prosecution based on the facts of particular cases, and that is presumably what it did regard

ing Smith and Black. Why this was not sufficient to bring the case within Smith ’s rule about individualized exemp

tions is unclear. See McConnell, Free Exercise Revisionism 1124. Having pigeon-holed Sherbert

, Hobbie , and Thomas as unemployment compensation decisions, Smith still faced problems. For one thing, the Court had previously applied the Sherbert test in many cases not involving unemploy

ment compensation, including Hernandez v. Commissioner

, 490 U. S. 680 (1989) (disallowance of tax deduction); Lee

,

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76 “The clear implication was that a ‘direct’ interference would have been unconstitutional.” McConnell, Free Exercise Revisionism 1125.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 57 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 455 U. S. 252 (payment of taxes); and Gillette, 401 U. S. 437 (denial of conscientious objector status to person with reli

gious objection to a particular war). To get these cases out of the way, Smith claimed that, because they ultimately found no free-exercise violations, they merely “ purported to apply the Sherbert test.” 494 U. S., at 883 (emphasis added). This was a curious observation. In all those cases, the Court invoked the Sherbert test but found that it did not require relief. See Hernandez , 490 U. S., at 699; Lee , 455 U. S., at 257–260; Gillette , 401 U. S., at 462

. Was the Smith Court questioning the sincerity of these earlier opinions? If not, then in what sense did those decisions merely “purport” to apply Sherbert ? Finally, having swept all these cases from the board, Smith still faced at least one big troublesome precedent: Yoder

. Yoder not only applied the Sherbert test but held that the Free Exercise Clause required an exemption to

tally unrelated to unemployment benefits. 406 U. S., at 220–221, 236. To dispose of Yoder

, Smith was forced to in

vent yet another special category of cases, those involving “hybrid-rights” claims. Yoder fell into this category because it implicated both the Amish parents’ free-exercise claim and a parental-rights claim stemming from Pierce v . Society of Sisters , 268 U. S. 510 (1925). See Smith , 494 U. S., at 881. And in such hybrid cases, Smith held, the Sherbert test survived. See 494 U. S., at 881–882. It is hard to see the justification for this curious doctrine. The idea seems to be that if two independently insufficient constitutional claims join force s they may merge into a sin

gle valid hybrid claim, but surely the rule cannot be that asserting two invalid claims, no matter how weak, is always enough. So perhaps the doctrine requires the assignment of a numerical score to each claim. If a passing grade is 70 and a party advances a free-sp eech claim that earns a grade of 40 and a free-exercise claim that merits a grade of 31, theA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 58 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment result would be a (barely) sufficient hybrid claim. Such a scheme is obviously unworkable and has never been recog

nized outside of Smith

. And then there is the proble m that the hybrid-rights ex

ception would largely swallow up Smith ’s general rule. A great many claims for religious exemptions can easily be understood as hybrid free-ex ercise/free-speech claims. Take the claim in Smith itself. To members of the Native American Church, the ingestion of peyote during a religious ceremony is a sacrament. When Smith and Black partici

pated in this sacrament, weren’t they engaging in a form of expressive conduct? Their in gestion of peyote “communi

cate[d], in a rather dramatic way, [their] faith in the tenets of the Native American Church,” and the State’s prohibition of that practice “interfered with their ability to communi

cate this message” in violation of the Free Speech Clause. McConnell, Free Exercise Revisionism 1122. And, “if a hy

brid claim is one in which a litigant would actually obtain an exemption from a formally neutral, generally applicable law under another constitutional provision, then there would have been no reason for the Court in [the so-called] hybrid cases to have mentioned the Free Exercise Clause at all.” Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 566–567 (opinion of Souter, J.); see also Laycock, 8 J. L. & Religion, at 106 (noting that Smith “reduces the free exercise clause to a cautious redun

dancy, relevant only to ‘hybrid’ cases”). It is telling that this Court has never once accepted a “hybrid rights” claim in the more than three decades since Smith

. In addition to all these maneuvers—creating special cat

egories for unemployment compensation cases, cases in

volving individualized exem ptions, and hybrid-rights

cases— Smith ignored the multiple occasions when the Court had directly repudiated the very rule that Smith adopted. See supra, at 13–14. Smith ’s rough treatment of prior decisions diminishes its own status as a precedent.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 59 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment

B Consistency with other precedents

. Smith is also discord

ant with other precedents. Smith did not overrule Sherbert or any of the other cases that built on Sherbert from 1963 to 1990, and for the reasons just discussed, Smith is tough to harmonize with those precedents. The same is true about more recent decisions. In Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v

. EEOC , 565 U. S. 171 (2012), the Court essentially held that the First Amendment entitled a religious school to a special exemption from the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), 104 Stat. 327, 42 U. S. C. §12101 et seq . When the school discharged a teacher, she claimed that she had been terminated because of disability. 565 U. S., at 178–179. Since the school considered her a “minister” and she provided religious instruction for her students, the school argued that her discharge fell within the so-called “ministerial exce ption” to generally applicable employment laws. Id., at 180. The Equal Employment Op

portunity Commission maintained that Smith precluded recognition of this exception because “the ADA’s prohibition on retaliation, like Oregon’s prohibition on peyote use, is a valid and neutral law of general applicability.” Id. , at 190;

see id. , at 189–190. We nevertheless held that the excep

tion applied. Id., at 190. 77 Similarly, in Our Lady of Gua

dalupe School v. Morrissey-Berru , 591 U. S. ___, ___–___

——————

77 Our strained attempt to square the ministerial exception with Smith highlights the tension between the two decisions. Smith held that a gen

erally applicable law satisfies the First Amendment if “prohibiting the exercise of religion . . . is not the object of the [government action] but merely the incidental effect.” 494 U. S., at 878. But the ADA’s effect on religion in Hosanna-Tabor was “incidental” in the sense in which the term was used in Smith . The opinion in Hosanna-Tabor tried to distin

guish Smith as involving only “outward ph ysical acts” instead of “the faith and mission of the church itself.” 565 U. S., at 190. But a prohibi

tion of peyote use surely affected “the faith and mission” of the Native American Church, which regards the ingestion of peyote as a sacrament.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 60 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment (2020) (slip op., at 21–22), we found that other religious schools were entitled to similar exemptions from both the ADA and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967. There is also tension between Smith and our opinion in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v . Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n, 584 U. S. ___ (2018). In that case, we observed that “[w]hen it comes to weddings, it can be assumed that a member of the clergy who objects to gay marriage on moral and religious grounds could not be compelled to perform the ceremony without denial of his or her right to the free exer

cise of religion.” Id ., at ___ (slip op., at 10). The clear import of this observation is that such a member of the clergy would be entitled to a religious exemption from a state law restricting the authority to pe rform a state-recognized mar

riage to individuals who are willing to officiate both oppo

site-sex and same-sex weddings. Other inconsistencies exist. Smith declared that “a pri

vate right to ignore generally applicable laws” would be a “constitutional anomaly,” 494 U. S., at 886, but this Court has often permitted exemptions from generally applicable laws in First Amendment cases. For instance, in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale , 530 U. S. 640, 656 (2000), we granted the Boy Scouts an exemption from an otherwise generally applicable state public accommodations law. In Hurley v . Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston

, Inc ., 515 U. S. 557, 573 (1995), parade sponsors’ speech was exempted from the requirements of a similar law. The granting of an exemption from a generally applicable law is tantamount to a holding that a law is unconstitu

tional as applied to a particu lar set of facts, see Barclay & Rienzi, Constitutional Anomalies or As

- Applied Chal

lenges? A Defense of Religious Exemptions

, 59 Boston Col

lege L. Rev. 1595, 1611 (2018), and cases holding generallyA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 61 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment applicable laws unconstitutio nal as applied are unremark

able. “[T]he normal rule is that partial, rather than facial, invalidation is the required course, such that a statute may . . . be declared invalid to the extent that it reaches too far, but otherwise left intact.” Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New Eng., 546 U. S. 320, 329 (2006) (internal quo

tation marks omitted; emphasis added). Thus, in Brown v. Socialist Workers ’74 Campaign Comm. (Ohio) , 459 U. S. 87 (1982), we held that a law requiring disclosure of campaign contributions and expenditures could not be “constitution

ally applied” to a minor party whose members and contrib

utors would face “threats, harassment or reprisals.” Id. , at 101–102. Cf. NAACP v . Alabama ex rel. Patterson , 357 U. S. 449, 466 (1958) (exempting the NAACP from a disclo

sure order entered to purpo rtedly investigate compliance with a generally applicable statute). In Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell , 485 U. S. 46, 56 (1988), and Snyder v

. Phelps , 562 U. S. 443, 459 (2011), the Court held that an established and generally applicable tort claim (the inten

tional infliction of emotional distress) could not constitu

tionally be applied to the particular expression at issue. Similarly, breach-of-the-peace laws, although generally valid, have been held to violate the Free Speech Clause un

der certain circumstances. See Cohen v . California , 403 U. S. 15, 16, 26 (1971); Cantwell , 310 U. S., at 300, 311; see also Bartnicki v. Vopper , 532 U. S. 514, 517, 535 (2001) (re

spondents not liable under law prohibiting disclosure of il

legally intercepted communications because their speech was protected by the First Amendment); United States v. Treasury Employees , 513 U. S. 454, 477 (1995) (respondents not subject to the honoraria ban because it would violate their First Amendment rights); United States v. Grace , 461 U. S. 171, 175, 179, 183 (1983) (respondents engaging in ex

pressive conduct on public si dewalks not subject to law gen

erally regulating conduct on Supreme Court grounds). Finally, Smith ’s treatment of the free-exercise right isA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 62 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment fundamentally at odds with how we usually think about lib

erties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. As Justice Jackson famously put it, “[t]he very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of politi

cal controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majori

ties and officials.” Barnette , 319 U. S., at 638. Smith , by contrast, held that protection of religious liberty was better left to the political process than to courts. 494 U. S., at 890. In Smith ’s view, the Nation simply could not “afford the lux

ury” of protecting the free exercise of religion from gener

ally applicable laws. Id. , at 888. Under this interpretation, the free exercise of religion does not receive the judicial pro

tection afforded to other, favored rights.

C Workability . One of Smith ’s supposed virtues was ease of application, but things have not turned out that way. In

stead, at least four serious problems have arisen and con

tinue to plague courts when called upon to apply Smith

. 1 “Hybrid-rights” cases . Th e “hybrid rights” exception, which was essential to distinguish Yoder , has baffled the lower courts. They are divided into at least three camps. See Combs v. Homer-Center School Dist. , 540 F. 3d 231, 244–247 (CA3 2008) (describing Circuit split). Some courts have taken the extraordinary step of openly refusing to fol

low this part of Smith ’s interpretation. The Sixth Circuit was remarkably blunt: “[H]old[ing] that the legal standardunder the Free Exercise Clause depends on whether a freeexercise claim is coupled with other constitutional rights . . . is completely illogical.” Kissinger v . Board of Trustees of Ohio State Univ. , 5 F. 3d 177, 180 (1993). The Second and Third Circuits have taken a similar approach. See Leebaert v. Harrington , 332 F. 3d 134, 144 (CA2 2003) (“We . . . can think of no good reason for the standard of reviewA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 63 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment to vary simply with the number of constitutional rights that the plaintiff asserts have been violated”); Knight v . Con

necticut Dept

. of Pub. Health , 275 F. 3d 156, 167 (CA2 2001); Combs

, 540 F. 3d, at 247 (“Until the Supreme Court pro

vides direction, we believe the hybrid-rights theory to be dicta”). A second camp holds that th e hybrid-rights exception ap

plies only when a free-exercise claim is joined with some other independently viable claim. See Archdiocese of Wash

ington v. WMATA , 897 F. 3d 314, 331 (CADC 2018) (A “hy

brid rights claim . . . requires independently viable free speech and free exercise claims”); Gary S. v. Manchester School Dist. , 374 F. 3d 15, 19 (CA1 2004) (adopting District Court’s reasoning that “the [hybrid-rights] exception can be invoked only if the plaintiff has joined a free exercise chal

lenge with another independently viable constitutional claim,” 241 F. Supp. 2d 111, 121 (NH 2003)); Brown v. Hot, Sexy and Safer Productions , 68 F. 3d 525, 539 (CA1 1995). But this approach essentially makes the free-exercise claim irrelevant. See Axson-Flynn v. Johnson , 356 F. 3d 1277, 1296–1297 (CA10 2004) (“[I]t makes no sense to adopt a strict standard that essentially requires a successful com

panion claim because such a test would make the free exer

cise claim unnecessary”); see also Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 567 (opinion of Souter, J.) (making the same point). The third group requires that the non-free-exercise claim be “colorable.” See Cornerstone Christian Schools v. Uni

versity Interscholastic League , 563 F. 3d 127, 136, n. 8 (CA5 2009); San Jose Christian College v. Morgan Hill , 360 F. 3d 1024, 1032–1033 (CA9 2004); Axson-Flynn, 356 F. 3d, at 1295–1297. But what that means is obscure. See, e.g., id

., at 1295 (referring to “helpful” analogies such as the “ ‘like

lihood of success on the merits’ standard for preliminary in

junctions” or the pre-Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act standard for obtaining an evidentiary hearing,A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 64 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment

i.e. , a “‘colorable showing of factual innocence’ ”). 78 It is rare to encounter a hold ing of this Court that has so thoroughly stymied or elicited such open derision from the Courts of Appeals.

2 Rules that “target” religion . Post- Smith cases have also struggled with the task of determining whether a pur

portedly neutral rule “targets” religious exercise or has the restriction of religious ex ercise as its “object.” Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 534; Smith , 494 U. S., at 878. A threshold question is whether “targeting” calls for an objective or subjective in

quiry. Must “targeting” be assessed based solely on the terms of the relevant rule or rules? Or can evidence of the rulemakers’ motivation be taken into account? If subjective motivations may be considered, does it matter whether the challenged state action is an adjudication, the promulga

tion of a rule, or the enactment of legislation? Should courts consider the motivations of only the officials who took the challenged action, or may they also take into account com

ments by superiors and others in a position of influence? And what degree of hostility to religion or a religious group is required to prove “targeting”? The genesis of this problem was Smith ’s holding that a rule is not neutral “if prohibiting the exercise of religion” is its “object.” 494 U. S., at 878. Smith did not elaborate on what that meant, and later in Lukumi , which concerned city ordinances that burdened the practice of Santeria, 508 U. S., at 525–528, Justices in the Smith majority adopted different interpretations. Jus tice Scalia and Chief Justice

——————

78 Recently, some lower courts have proceeded under yet another ap

proach, which analyzes whether the claims presented are sufficiently similar to those raised in the cases that this Court purported to distin

guish in Smith . See Henderson v. McMurray , 987 F. 3d 997, 1006–1007 (CA11 2021); see also Illinois Bible Colleges Assn. v. Anderson , 870 F. 3d 631, 641 (CA7 2017).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 65 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment Rehnquist took the position that the “object” of a rule mustbe determined by its terms and that evidence of the rulemakers’ motivation should not be considered. 508 U. S., at 557–559. This interpretation had the disadvantage of al

lowing skillful rulemakers to ta rget religious exercise by de

vising a facially neutral rule that applies to both the tar

geted religious conduct and a s lice of secular conduct that can be burdened without eliciting unacceptable opposition from those whose interests are affected. The alternative to this approach takes courts into the dif

ficult business of ascertaining the subjective motivations of rulemakers. In Lukumi , Justices Kennedy and Stevens took that path and relied on numerous statements by coun

cil members showing that their object was to ban the prac

tice of Santeria within the city’s borders. Id., at 540–542. Thus, Lukumi left the meaning of a rule’s “object” up in the air. When the issue returned in Masterpiece Cakeshop , the question was only partially resolved. Holding that the Col

orado Civil Rights Commission violated the free-exercise rights of a baker who refused for religious reasons to create a cake for a same-sex wedding, the Court pointed to dispar

aging statements made by commission members, and the Court noted that these comments, “by an adjudicatory body deciding a particular case,” “w ere made in a very different context” from the remarks by the council members in Lukumi

. Masterpiece Cakeshop, 584 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 14). That is as far as this Court’s decisions have gone on the question of targeting, and thus many important ques

tions remain open. The present case highlights two—specifically, which offi

cials’ motivations are relevant and what degree of dispar

agement must be shown to establish unconstitutional tar

geting. In Masterpiece Cakeshop , the commissioners’ statements—comparing the baker’s actions to the Holo

caust and slavery and suggesting that his beliefs were justA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 66 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment an excuse for bigotry—went too far. Id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 12–14). But what about the comments of Philadelphia officials in this case? The city council labeled CSS’s policy “discrimination that occurs under the guise of religious freedom.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 147a. The mayor had said that the Archbishop’s actions were not “Christian,” and he once called on the Pope “to kick some ass here.” Id. , at 173a, 177a–178a. In addition, the commissioner of the Depart

ment of Human Services (DHS), who serves at the mayor’s pleasure, 79 disparaged CSS’s policy as out of date and out of touch with Pope Francis’s teachings. 80 The Third Circuit found this evidence insufficient. Alt

hough the mayor conferred with the DHS commissioner both before and after her m eeting with CSS representa

tives, the mayor’s remarks were disregarded because there was no evidence “that he played a direct role, or even a sig

nificant role, in the process.” 922 F. 3d, at 157 (emphasis added). The city council’s suggestion that CSS’s religious liberty claim was a “guise” for discrimination was found to “fal[l] into [a] grey zone,” and the commissioner’s debate with a CSS representative about up-to-date Catholic teach

ing, which “some might think . . . improper” “if taken out of context” was “best viewed as an effort to reach common

——————

79 App. 367–369 (Commissioner Figueora testifying that she was ap

pointed by the mayor, reports ultimately to him, and considers herself part of his administration); Phila. Home Rule Charter, Ar t. IX, ch. 2, §9– 200 (Removal of Appointive Officers).

80 App. 182, 365–366. Apart from the statements made by City offi

cials, other evidence suggested that the City was targeting CSS. For in

stance, the City changed its justificat ion for the closure of intake to CSS numerous times. Brief for Petitioner s 12–15 (describing six different jus

tifications). And although the City’s stated harm was that CSS’s process for certifying new families was discriminatory, it responded by prohibit

ing placement with all CSS families, including those already certified. The City’s response therefore appears to “proscribe more religious con

duct than is necessary to ac hieve [its] stated ends.” Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 538.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 67 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment ground with [CSS] by appealing to an authority within their shared religious tradition.” Ibid . One may agree or disa

gree with the Third Circuit’s characterization and evalua

tion of the statements of the City officials, but the court’s analysis highlights the extremely impressionistic inquiry that Smith ’s targeting requirement may entail. Confusion and disagreement about “targeting” have sur

faced in other cases. Recently in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v . Cuomo , 592 U. S. ___ (2020) ( per curiam ), there were conflicting views about comments made by the Gover

nor of New York. On the day before he severely restricted religious services in Brooklyn, the Governor “said that if the ‘ultra-Orthodox [Jewish] comm unity’ would not agree to en

force the rules, ‘then we’ll close the institutions down.’ ” Agudath Israel of America v. Cuomo , 980 F. 3d 222, 229 (CA2 2020) (Park, J., dissenting). A dissenting judge on the Second Circuit thought the Governor had crossed the line, ibid. , and we ultimately enjoined enforcement of the rules, Roman Catholic Diocese , 592 U. S., at ___. But two Justices who dissented found the Governor’s comments inconse

quential. Id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 4–5) (opinion of S OTOMAYOR , J., joined by K AGAN , J.). In Stormans, Inc. v. Wiesman , 579 U. S. ___ (2016) (deny

ing certiorari), there was similar disagreement. That case featured strong evidence that pro-life Christian pharma

cists who refused to dispense emergency contraceptives were the object of a new rule requiring every pharmacy to dispense every Food and Drug Administration-approved drug. A primary drafter of the rule all but admitted that the rule was aimed at these pharmacists, and the Governor took unusual steps to secure adoption of the rule. Stor

mans, Inc. v. Selecky , 854 F. Supp. 2d 925, 937–943 (WD Wash. 2012). After a 12-day tri al, the District Court found that Christian pharmacists had been targeted, id., at 966, 987, but the Ninth Circuit refused to accept that finding,A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 68 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment Stormans, Inc. , 794 F. 3d 1064, 1079 (2015). Compare Stor

mans, Inc. , 579 U. S., at ___–___, and n. 3 (A LITO , J., joined by R OBERTS , C. J., and T HOMAS , J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 8–9, and n. 3) (questioning Ninth Circuit’s finding). Decisions of the lower courts on the issue of targeting re

main in disarray. Compare F. F. v. State

, 66 Misc. 3d 467, 479–482, 114 N. Y. S. 3d 852, 865–867 (2019) (declining to consider individual legislators’ comments); Tenafly Eruv Assn., Inc. v. Tenafly , 309 F. 3d 144, 168, n. 30 (CA3 2002) (declining to reach issue), with Commack Self-Service Ko

sher Meats, Inc. v. Hooker , 680 F. 3d 194, 211 (CA2 2012) (considering legislative history); St. John’s United Church of Christ v. Chicago , 502 F. 3d 616, 633 (CA7 2007) (“[W]e must look at . . . the ‘historical background of the decision under challenge’ ” (quoting Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 540)); Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty, Inc. v. Min De Parle

, 212 F. 3d 1084, 1090 (CA8 2000) (targeting can be evi

denced by legislative history).

3 The nature and scope of exemptions . There is confusion about the meaning of Smith ’s holding on exemptions from generally applicable laws. Some decisions apply this spe

cial rule if multiple secular exemptions are granted. See,
e.g., Horen v. Commonwealth , 23 Va. App. 735, 743–744, 479 S. E. 2d 553, 557 (1997); Rader v. Johnston , 924 F. Supp. 1540, 1551–1553 (Neb. 1996). Others conclude that even one secular exemption is enough. See, e.g., Midrash Sephardi, Inc. v. Surfside , 366 F. 3d 1214, 1234–1235 (CA11 2004); Fraternal Order of Police Newark Lodge No. 12 v. Newark , 170 F. 3d 359, 365 (CA3 1999). And still oth

ers have applied the rule where the law, although allowing no exemptions on its face, was widely unenforced in cases involving secular conduct. See, e.g., Tenafly Eruv Assn.

, 309 F. 3d, at 167–168.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 69 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment

4 Identifying appropriate comparators . To determine whether a law provides equal treatment for secular and re

ligious conduct, two steps are required. First, a court must identify the secular conduct with which the religious con

duct is to be compared. Second, the court must determine whether the State’s reasons for regulating the religious con

duct apply with equal force to the secular conduct with which it is compared. See Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 543. In Smith , this inquiry undoubtedly seemed straightforward: The secular conduct and the religious conduct prohibited by the Oregon criminal statute were identical. But things are not always that simple. Cases involving rules designed to slow the spread of COVID–19 have driven that point home. State and local rules adopted for this purpose have typically imposed dif

ferent restrictions for different categories of activities. Sometimes religious services have been placed in a category with certain secular activities, and sometimes religious ser

vices have been given a separate category of their own. To determine whether COVID–19 rules provided neutral treatment for religious and secular conduct, it has been nec

essary to compare the restrictions on religious services with the restrictions on secular activities that present a compa

rable risk of spreading the virus, and identifying the secu

lar activities that should be used for comparison has been hotly contested. In South Bay United Pentecostal Church v . Newsom , 590 U. S. ___ (2020), where the Court refused to enjoin re

strictions on religious services, T HE C HIEF J USTICE ’s con

currence likened religious serv ices to lectures, concerts, movies, sports events, and theatrical performances. Id., at ___ (slip op., at 2). The dissenters, on the other hand, fo

cused on “supermarkets, restaurants, factories, and of

fices.” Id., at ___ (opinion of K AVANAUGH , J., joined by T HOMAS and G ORSUCH , JJ.) (slip op., at 3).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 70 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment

In Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v . Sisolak , 591 U. S. ___ (2020), Nevada defended a rule imposing severe limits on attendance at religious services and argued that houses of worship should be compared with “movie theaters, muse

ums, art galleries, zoos, aquariums, trade schools, and tech

nical schools.” Response to Emergency Application for In

junction, O. T. 2019, No. 19A1070, pp. 7, 14–15. Members of this Court who would have enjoined the Nevada rule looked to the State’s more gene rous rules for casinos, bowl

ing alleys, and fitness facilities. 591 U. S., at ___–___ (A LITO , J., joined by T HOMAS and K AVANAUGH , JJ., dissent

ing) (slip op., at 6–7). In Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn , 592 U. S. ___, Justices in the majority compared houses of worship with large retail establishments, factories, schools, liquor stores, bicycle repair shops, and pet shops, id., at ___ (slip op., at 3); id. , at ___ (G ORSUCH , J., concurring) (slip op., at 2), id., at ___ (K AVANAUGH , J., concurring) (slip op., at 2), while dissenters cited theaters and concert halls, id., at ___ (opin

ion of S OTOMAYOR , J., joined by K AGAN , J.) (slip op., at 2). In Danville Christian Academy, Inc. v . Beshear , 592 U. S. ___ (2020), the District Court enjoined enforcement of an executive order that compelled the closing of a religiously affiliated school, reasoning that the State permitted pre

schools, colleges, and universitie s to stay open and also al

lowed attendance at concerts and lectures. Danville Chris

tian Academy, Inc. v . Beshear , ___ F. Supp. 3d ___, 2020 WL 6954650, *4 (ED Ky., Nov. 25, 2020). The Sixth Circuit re

versed, concluding that the rule was neutral and generally applicable because it applied to all elementary and second

ary schools, whether secular or religious. Kentucky ex rel. Danville Christian Academy, Inc. v . Beshear , 981 F. 3d 505, 509 (2020). Much of Smith ’s initial appeal was likely its apparent simplicity. Smith seemed to offer a relatively simple and clear-cut rule that would be easy to apply. Experience hasA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 71 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment

shown otherwise.

D Subsequent developments . Developments since Smith provide additional reasons for changing course. The Smith majority thought that adherence to Sherbert would invite “anarchy,” 494 U. S., at 888, but experience has shown that this fear was not well founded. Both RFRA and RLUIPA impose essentially the same requirements as Sherbert , and we have observed that the courts are well “up to the task” of applying that test. Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Benef

icente União do Vegetal , 546 U. S. 418, 436 (2006). See also Cutter v . Wilkinson , 544 U. S. 709, 722 (2005) (noting “no cause to believe” the test could not be “applied in an appro

priately balanced way”). Another significant development is the subsequent pro

fusion of studies on the orig inal meaning of the Free Exer

cise Clause. When Smith was decided, the available schol

arship was thin, and the Court received no briefing on the subject. Since then, scholars have explored the subject in great depth. 81

* * * Multiple factors strongly favor overruling Smith . Are there countervailing factors?

E None is apparent. Reliance is often the strongest factor favoring the retention of a challenged precedent, but no strong reliance interests are cited in any of the numerous

——————

81 See, e.g., McConnell, Origins 1409; McCo nnell, Free Exercise Revi

sionism 1109; McConnell, Freedom From Persecution 819; Hamburger, Religious Exemption 915; Hamburger, More Is Less 835; Laycock, 7 J. Contemp. Legal Issues 313; Bradley, 20 Hofstra L. Rev. 245; Campbell, A New Approach 973; Kmiec, 59 UMKC L. Rev. 591; Lash, 88 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1106; Lombardi, Free Exercise 369; Muñoz, Original Meaning 1083; Nestor 971; Nussbaum, Liberty of Conscience, at 120–130; Walsh 1.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 72 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment briefs urging us to preserve Smith . Indeed, the term is rarely even mentioned. All that the City has to say on the subject is that overrul

ing Smith would cause “substantial regulatory . . . disrup

tion” by displacing RFRA, RLUIPA, and related state laws, Brief for City Respondents 51 (internal quotation marks omitted), but this is a baffling argument. How would over

ruling Smith disrupt the operation of laws that were en

acted to abrogate Smith ? One of the City’s amici , the New York State Bar Associa

tion, offers a different relianc e argument. It claims that some individuals, relying on Smith , have moved to juris

dictions with anti-discrimination laws that do not permit religious exemptions. Brief for New York State Bar Associ

ation as Amicus Curiae 11. The bar association does not cite any actual examples of individuals who fall into this category, and there is reason to doubt that many actually exist. For the hypothesized course of conduct to make sense, all of the following conditions woul d have to be met. First, it would be necessary for the individuals in question to believe that a religiously motivated party in the jurisdiction they left or avoided might engage in conduct that harmed them. Second, this conduct would hav e to be conduct not already protected by Smith in that it (a) did not violate a generally applicable state law, (b) that law did not allow individual exemptions, and (c) there was insufficient proof of religious targeting. Third, the feared conduct would have to fall out

side the scope of RLUIPA. Fourth, the conduct, although not protected by Smith , would have to be otherwise permit

ted by local law, for example, through a state version of RFRA. Fifth, this fear of harm at the hands of a religiously motivated actor would have to be a but-for cause of the de

cision to move. Perhaps there are individuals who fall into the category that the bar association hypothesizes, but we should not allow violations of the Free Exercise Clause in perpetuity based on such speculation.A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 73 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment Indeed, even if more substantial reliance could be shown, Smith ’s dubious standing would weigh against giving this factor too much weight. Smith has been embattled since the day it was decided, and calls for its reexamination have intensified in recent years. See Masterpiece Cakeshop, 584 U. S., at ___ (G ORSUCH , J., joined by A LITO , J., concurring) (slip op., at 1); Kennedy , 586 U. S., at ___–___ (A LITO , J., joined by T HOMAS , G ORSUCH , and K AVANAUGH , JJ., concur

ring in denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 5–6); City of Boerne 521 U. S., at 566 (B REYER , J., dissenting) (“[T]he Court should direct the parties to brief the question whether [ Smith ] was correctly decided”); id. , at 565 (O’Connor, J., joined by B REYER , J., dissenting) (“[I]t is essential for the Court to reconsider its holding in Smith ”); Lukumi , 508 U. S., at 559 (Souter, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (“[I]n a case presenting the issue, the Court should reexamine the rule Smith declared”). Thus, parties have long been on notice that the decision might soon be reconsidered. See Janus, 585 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 45).

* * *
Smith was wrongly decided. As long as it remains on the books, it threatens a fundamental freedom. And while prec

edent should not lightly be cast aside, the Court’s error in Smith should now be corrected.

VI A
If Smith is overruled, what legal standard should be ap

plied in this case? The answer that comes most readily to mind is the standard that Smith replaced: A law that im

poses a substantial burden on religious exercise can be sus

tained only if it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest. Whether this test should be rephrased or supplemented with specific rules is a question that need not be resolvedA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 74 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment here because Philadelphia’s ouster of CSS from foster care work simply does not further any interest that can properly be protected in this case. As noted, CSS’s policy has not hindered any same-sex couples from becoming foster par

ents, and there is no threat that it will do so in the future. CSS’s policy has only one effect: It expresses the idea that same-sex couples should not be foster parents because only a man and a woman should marry. Many people today find this idea not only objectionable but hurtful. Nevertheless, protecting against this form of harm is not an interest that can justify the abridgment of First Amendment rights. We have covered this ground repeatedly in free speech cases. In an open, pluralistic, self-governing society, the ex

pression of an idea cannot be suppressed simply because some find it offensive, insulting, or even wounding. See Matal v. Tam , 582 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2017) (slip op., at 1– 2) (“Speech may not be banned on the ground that it ex

presses ideas that offend”); Hurley , 515 U. S., at 579 (“[T]he law . . . is not free to interfere with speech for no better rea

son than promoting an approved message or discouraging a disfavored one, however enlightened either purpose may strike the government”); Johnson , 491 U. S., at 414 (“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amend

ment, it is that the government may not prohibit the ex

pression of an idea simply because society finds the idea it

self offensive or disagreeable”); FCC v. Pacifica Foundation

, 438 U. S. 726, 745 (1978) (opinion of Stevens, J.) (“[T]he fact that society may find speech o ffensive is not a sufficient rea

son for suppressing it. Indeed, if it is the speaker’s opinion that gives offense, that conse quence is a reason for accord

ing it constitutional protection”); Street v. New York , 394 U. S. 576, 592 (1969) (“[T]he public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely bec ause the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers”); Cf. Coates v. Cincinnati

, 402 U. S. 611, 615 (1971) (“Our decisions establish that mere public intolerance or animosity cannot be the basis forA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 75 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment abridgment of . . . constitutional freedoms”). The same fundamental principle applies to religious prac

tices that give offense. The preservation of religious free

dom depends on that principle. Many core religious beliefs are perceived as hateful by members of other religions or nonbelievers. Proclaiming that there is only one God is of

fensive to polytheists, and saying that there are many gods is anathema to Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Declaring that Jesus was the Son of God is offensive to Judaism and Islam, and stating that Jesus was not the Son of God is in

sulting to Christian belief. Expressing a belief in God is nonsense to atheists, but denying the existence of God or proclaiming that religion has been a plague is infuriating to those for whom religion is all-important. Suppressing speech—or relig ious practice—simply be

cause it expresses an idea that some find hurtful is a zerosum game. While CSS’s ideas about marriage are likely to be objectionable to same-sex couples, lumping those who hold traditional beliefs about marriage together with racial bigots is insulting to those who retain such beliefs. In Ober

gefell v . Hodges, 576 U. S. 644 (2015), the majority made a commitment. It refused to equate traditional beliefs about marriage, which it termed “decent and honorable,” id ., at 672, with racism, which is neither. And it promised that “religions, and those who adhere to religious doctrines, may continue to advocate with utmost, sincere conviction that, by divine precepts, same-sex marriage should not be con

doned.” Id ., at 679. An open society can keep that promise while still respecting the “digni ty,” “worth,” and fundamen

tal equality of all members of the community. Masterpiece Cakeshop , 584 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 9).

B One final argument must be addressed. Philadelphia and many of its amici contend that preservation of the City’s policy is not dependent on Smith. They argue that the CityA LITO , J., concurring in judgment 76 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment is simply asserting the right to control its own internal op

erations, and they analogize CSS to either a City employee or a contractor hired to perform an exclusively governmen

tal function. This argument mischaracterizes the relationship be

tween CSS and the City. The members of CSS’s staff are not City employees; the power asserted by the City goes far beyond a refusal to enter into a contract; and the function that CSS and other private fost er care agencies have been performing for decades has not historically been an exclu

sively governmental function. See, e.g., Leshko v. Servis

, 423 F. 3d 337, 343–344 (CA3 2005) (“No aspect of providing care to foster children in Pennsylvania has ever been the exclusive province of the government”); Rayburn v. Hogue

, 241 F. 3d 1341, 1347 (CA11 2001) (acknowledging that fos

ter care is not traditionally an exclusive state prerogative); Milburn v. Anne Arundel Cty. Dept. of Social Servs. , 871 F. 2d 474, 479 (CA4 1989) (same); Malachowski v. Keene , 787 F. 2d 704, 711 (CA1 1986) (same); see also Ismail v. County of Orange , 693 Fed. Appx. 507, 512 (CA9 2017) (concluding that foster parents were not state actors). On the contrary, States and cities were latecomers to this field, and even to

day, they typically leave most of the work to private agen

cies. The power that the City asserts is essentially the power to deny CSS a license to conti nue to perform work that it has carried out for decades and that religious groups have performed since time immemorial. Therefore, the cases that provide the basis for the City’s argument—such as Garcetti v. Ceballos , 547 U. S. 410 (2006), and Board of Comm’rs, Wabounsee Cty . v. Umbehr , 518 U. S. 668 (1996)—are far afield. A go vernment cannot “reduce a group’s First Amendment rights by simply imposing a li

censing requirement.” National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra , 585 U. S. ___, ___ (2018) (slip op., at 14).A LITO , J., concurring in judgment 77 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

A LITO , J., concurring in judgment

* * * For all these reasons, I would overrule Smith and reverse the decision below. Philadelphia’s exclusion of CSS from foster care work violates the Free Exercise Clause, and CSS is therefore entitled to an injunction barring Philadelphia from taking such action. After receiving more than 2,500 pages of briefing and af

ter more than a half-year of post-argument cogitation, the Court has emitted a wisp of a decision that leaves religious liberty in a confused and vulnerable state. Those who count on this Court to stand up for the First Amendment have every right to be disappointed—as am I._________________

_________________ 1 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

G ORSUCH , J., concurring in judgment 

## SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

No. 19–123

SHARONELL FULTON, ET AL ., PETITIONERS v. CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, ET AL

.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
[June 17, 2021]

J USTICE G ORSUCH , with whom J USTICE T HOMAS and J USTICE A LITO join, concurring in the judgment. The Court granted certiorari to decide whether to over

rule Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith , 494 U. S. 872 (1990). As J USTICE A LITO ’s opinion demonstrates, Smith failed to respect this Court’s prece

dents, was mistaken as a matter of the Constitution’s orig

inal public meaning, and has proven unworkable in prac

tice. A majority of our colleague s, however, seek to sidestep the question. They agree that the City of Philadelphia’s treatment of Catholic Social Services (CSS) violates the Free Exercise Clause. But, they say, there’s no “need” or “reason” to address the error of Smith today. Ante, at 5 (majority opinion); ante , at 2 (B ARRETT , J., concurring). On the surface it may seem a nice move, but dig an inch deep and problems emerge. Smith exempts “neutral” and “generally applicable” laws from First Amendment scru

tiny. 494 U. S., at 878–881. The City argues that its chal

lenged rules qualify for that exemption because they re

quire all foster-care agencies —religious and non-religious alike—to recruit and certify same-sex couples interested in serving as foster parents. For its part, the majority as

sumes (without deciding) that Philadelphia’s rule is indeed “neutral” toward religion. Ante, at 5. So to avoid Smith ’s exemption and subject the City’s policy to First Amendment2 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

G ORSUCH , J., concurring in judgment scrutiny, the majority must carry the burden of showing that the policy isn’t “generally applicable.”

* That path turns out to be a long and lonely one. The dis

trict court held that the City’s public accommodations law (its Fair Practices Ordinance or FPO) is both generally ap

plicable and applicable to CSS. At least initially, the ma

jority chooses to bypass the district court’s major premise— that the FPO qualifies as “g enerally applicable” under Smith . It’s a curious choice given that the FPO applies only to certain defined entities that qualify as public accommo

dations while the “generally applicable law” in Smith was “an across-the-board criminal prohibition” enforceable against anyone. 494 U. S., at 884. But if the goal is to turn a big dispute of constitutional law into a small one, the ma

jority’s choice to focus its atta ck on the district court’s minor premise—that the FPO applies to CSS as a matter of mu

nicipal law—begins to make some sense. Still, it isn’t ex

actly an obvious path. The Third Circuit did not address the district court’s interpretation of the FPO. And not one of the over 80 briefs before us contests it. To get to where it wishes to go, then, the majority must go it alone. So much for the adversarial process and being “a court of review, not of first view.” Brownback v. King , 592 U. S. ___, ___, n. 4 (2021) (slip op., at 5, n. 4) (internal quotation marks omit

ted). Trailblazing through the Philadelphia city code turns out to be no walk in the park ei ther. As the district court ob

served, the City’s FPO defines “public accommodations” ex

pansively to include “[a]ny prov ider” that “solicits or accepts patronage” of “the public or whose . . . services [or] facili

ties” are “made available to the public.” App. to Pet. for Cert. 77a (alteration omitted; emphasis deleted). And, the district court held, this definition covers CSS because (among other things) it “public ly solicits prospective foster3 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

G ORSUCH , J., concurring in judgment parents” and “provides professional ‘services’ to the public.” Id., at 78a. All of which would seem to block the majority’s way. So how does it get around that problem? It changes the conversation. The majority ignores the FPO’s expansive definition of “public accommodations.” It ignores the reason the distri ct court offered for why CSS falls within that definition. Instead, it asks us to look to a different public accommodations law—a Commonwealth of Pennsylvania public accommodations statute. See ante, at 10–11 (discussing Pa. Stat. Ann., Tit. 43, §954( l ) (Purdon Cum. Supp. 2009)). And, the majority promises, CSS fails to qualify as a public accommodation under the terms of that law. But why should we ignore the City’s law and look to the Commonwealth’s? No one knows because the major

ity doesn’t say. Even playing along with this statutory shell game doesn’t solve the problem. The majority highlights the fact that the state law lists various examples of public accommoda

tions—including hotels, restaurants, and swimming pools. Ante, at 11. The majority then argues that foster agencies fail to qualify as public accommodations because, unlike these listed entities, foster agencies “involv[e] a customized and selective assessment.” Ibid. But where does that dis

tinction come from? Not the text of the state statute, not state case law, and certainly not from the briefs. The ma

jority just declares it—a ne w rule of Pennsylvania common law handed down by the United States Supreme Court. The majority’s gloss on state law isn’t just novel, it’s prob

ably wrong. While the statute lists hotels, restaurants, and swimming pools as examples of public accommodations, it also lists over 40 other kinds of institutions—and the stat

ute emphasizes that these examples are illustrative, not ex

haustive. See §954( l ). Among its illustrations, too, the stat

ute offers public “colleges and universities” as examples of public accommodations. Ibid. Often these institutions do engage in a “customized and se lective assessment” of their4 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

G ORSUCH , J., concurring in judgment clients (students) and employees (faculty). And if they can qualify as public accommodations under the state statute, it isn’t exactly clear why foster agencies cannot. What does the majority have to say about this problem? Again, silence. If anything, the majority’s next move only adds to the confusion. It denies cooking up any of these arguments on its own. It says it merely means to “agree with CSS’s posi

tion . . . that its ‘foster servic es do not constitute a “public accommodation” under the City’s Fair Practices Ordi

nance.’ ” Ante, at 13 (quoting App. to Pet. for Cert. 159a). But CSS’s cited “position”—which comes from a letter it sent to the City before litigation even began—includes nothing like the majority’s convoluted chain of reasoning involving a separate state statute. Id.

, at 159a–160a. In

stead, CSS’s letter contends that the organization’s services do not qualify as “public accommodations” because they are “only available to at-risk children who have been removed by the state and are in need of a loving home.” Ibid. The majority tells us with assurance that it “agree[s] with” this position, adding that it would be “incongru[ous]” to “dee[m] a private religious foster agen cy a public accommodation.” Ante, at 12. What to make of all this? Maybe this part of the majority opinion should be read only as reaching for something—an

ything—to support its curious separate-statute move. But maybe the majority means to reject the district court’s ma

jor premise after all—suggesting it would be incongruous for public accommodations laws to qualify as generally ap

plicable under Smith because they do not apply to everyone. Or maybe the majority means to invoke a canon of consti

tutional avoidance: Before co ncluding that a public accom

modations law is generally applicable under Smith , courts must ask themselves whether it would be “incongru[ous]” to apply that law to religious groups. Maybe all this ambi

guity is deliberate, maybe not. The only thing certain here5 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

G ORSUCH , J., concurring in judgment is that the majority’s attempt to cloak itself in CSS’s argu

ment introduces more questions than answers.

* Still that’s not the end of it. Even now, the majority’s circumnavigation of Smith remains only half complete. The City argues that, in addition to the FPO, another generally applicable nondiscrimination rule can be found in §15.1 of its contract with CSS. That provision independently in

structs that foster service providers “shall not discriminate or permit discrimination against any individual on the ba

sis of . . . sexual orientation.” Supp. App. to Brief for City Respondents 31. This provision, the City contends, amounts to a second and separa te rule of general applica

bility exempt from First Amendment scrutiny under Smith

. Once more, the majority must find some way around the problem. Its attempt to do so proceeds in three steps. First, the majority directs our attention to another provi

sion of the contract—§3.21 . See ante, at 7–9

. Entitled “Re

jection of Referral,” this provision prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, race, religion, or other grounds “unless an exception is granted” in the government’s “sole discretion.” Supp. App. to Brief for City Respondents 16– 17. Clearly, the majority says, that provision doesn’t state a generally applicable rule against discrimination because it expressly contemplates “exceptions.” Ante, at 8. But how does that help? As §3.21’s title indicates, the provision contemplates exceptions only when it comes to the referral stage of the foster process—where the govern

ment seeks to place a particular child with an available fos

ter family. See A. Scalia & B. Garner, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts 221 (2012) (“The title and headings are permissible indicators of meaning” (boldface deleted)). So, for example, the City has taken race into ac

count when placing a child who “used racial slurs” to avoid placing him with parents “of that race.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 61.6 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

G ORSUCH , J., concurring in judgment
Meanwhile, our case has nothin g to do with the referral — or placement—stage of the foster process. This case con

cerns the recruitment and certification stages—where fos

ter agencies like CSS screen and enroll adults who wish to serve as foster parents. And in those stages of the foster process, §15.1 seems to prohibit discrimination absolutely. That difficulty leads the majority to its second step. It asks us to ignore §3.21’s title and its limited application to the referral stage. See ante, at 9. Instead, the majority suggests, we should reconceive §3.21 as authorizing excep

tions to the City’s nondiscrimination rule at every stage of the foster process. Once we do that, the majority stresses, §3.21’s reservation of discre tion is irreconcilable with §15.1’s blanket prohibition against discrimination. See ante, at 9

. This sets up the majority’s final move—where the real magic happens. Having conjured a conflict within the con

tract, the majority devises its own solution. It points to some state court decisions that, it says, set forth the “rule” that Pennsylvania courts shouldn’t interpret one provision in a contract “to annul” another part. Ibid. To avoid nulli

fying §3.21’s reservation of discretion, the majority insists, it has no choice but to rewrite §15.1. All so that— voila — §15.1 now contains its own parallel reservation of discre

tion. See ante, at 9

. As rewritten, the contract contains no generally applicable rule against discrimination anywhere in the foster process. From start to finish, it is a dizzying series of maneuvers. The majority changes the terms of the parties’ contract, adopting an uncharitably broad reading (really revision) of §3.21. It asks us to ignore the usual rule that a more spe

cific contractual provision can comfortably coexist with a more general one. And it proceeds to resolve a conflict it created by rewriting §15.1. Once more, too, no party, ami

cus , or lower court argued for any of this.7 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

G ORSUCH , J., concurring in judgment To be sure, the majority again claims otherwise—repre

senting that it merely adopts the arguments of CSS and the United States. See ante, at 10. But here, too, the majority’s representation raises rather than resolves questions. In

stead of pursuing anything like the majority’s contract ar

guments, CSS and the United States suggest that §3.21

“ alone triggers strict scrutiny,” Reply Brief 5 (emphasis added), because that provision authorizes the City “to grant formal exemptions from its policy ” of nondiscrimination, Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae 26 (emphasis added). On this theory, it’s irrelevant whether §3.21 or §15.1 reserve discretion to grant exemptions at all stages of the process or at only one stag e. Instead, the City’s power to grant exemptions from its nondiscrimination policy any

where “undercuts its asserted interests” and thus “trig

ger[s] strict scrutiny” for applying the policy everywhere

. Id., at 21. Exceptions for one means strict scrutiny for all. See, e.g., Tandon v. Newsom

, ante , at 1–2 ( per curiam ). All of which leaves us to wonder: Is the majority just stretching to claim some cover for its nove l arguments? Or does it ac

tually mean to adopt the theory it professes to adopt?

* Given all the maneuvering, it’s hard not to wonder if the majority is so anxious to say nothing about Smith ’s fate that it is willing to say pretty much anything about municipal law and the parties’ briefs. One way or another, the major

ity seems determined to declar e there is no “need” or “rea

son” to revisit Smith today. A nte, at 5 (majority opinion); ante, at 2 (B ARRETT , J., concurring). But tell that to CSS. Its litigation has already lasted years—and today’s (ir)resolution promises more of the same. Had we followed the path J USTICE A LITO outlines— holding that the City’s rules cannot avoid strict scrutiny even if they qualify as neutral and generally applicable— this case would end today. Instead, the majority’s course8 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

G ORSUCH , J., concurring in judgment guarantees that this litigation is only getting started. As the final arbiter of state law, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court can effectively overrule the majority’s reading of the Commonwealth’s public accommodations law. The City can revise its FPO to make even plainer still that its law does encompass foster services. Or with a flick of a pen, munic

ipal lawyers may rewrite the City’s contract to close the §3.21 loophole. Once any of that happens, CSS will find itself back where it started. The City has made clear that it will never toler

ate CSS carrying out its foster-care mission in accordance with its sincerely held religious beliefs. To the City, it makes no difference that CSS has not denied service to a single same-sex couple; that do zens of other foster agencies stand willing to serve same-sex couples; or that CSS is com

mitted to help any inquiring same-sex couples find those other agencies. The City has expressed its determination to put CSS to a choice: Give up your sincerely held religious beliefs or give up serving foster children and families. If CSS is unwilling to provide foster-care services to same-sex couples, the City prefers that CSS provide no foster-care services at all. This litigatio n thus promises to slog on for years to come, consuming time and resources in court that could be better spent serving ch ildren. And throughout it all, the opacity of the majority’s professed endorsement of CSS’s arguments ensures the parties will be forced to de

vote resources to the unenviable task of debating what it

even means

. Nor will CSS bear the costs of the Court’s indecision alone. Individuals and groups across the country will pay the price—in dollars, in time, and in continued uncertainty about their religious liberties. Consider Jack Phillips, the baker whose religious beliefs prevented him from creating custom cakes to celebrate same-sex weddings. See Master

piece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Comm’n , 584 U. S. ___ (2018). After being forced to litigate all the way to9 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

G ORSUCH , J., concurring in judgment the Supreme Court, we ruled for him on narrow grounds similar to those the majority invokes today. Because cer

tain government officials resp onsible for deciding Mr. Phil

lips’s compliance with a local public accommodations law uttered statements exhibiting hostility to his religion, the Court held, those officials failed to act “neutrally” under Smith . See 584 U. S

., at ___–___ (slip op., at 16–18). But with Smith still on the books, all that victory assured Mr. Phillips was a new round of litigation—with officials now presumably more careful about admitting their motives. See Associated Press, Lakewood Baker Jack Phillips Sued for Refusing Gender Transition Cake (Mar. 22, 2021), https :// denver

. cbslocal. com / 2021 / 03 / 22 / jack

- phillips

- masterpiece-cakeshop-lakewood -transgender/. A nine-year odyssey thus barrels on. No doubt, too, those who cannot afford such endless litigation under Smith ’s regime have been and will continue to be forced to forfeit religious free

dom that the Constitution protects. The costs of today’s indecision fall on lower courts too. As recent cases involving COVID–19 regulations highlight, judges across the country continue to struggle to under

stand and apply Smith ’s test even thirty years after it was announced. In the last nine months alone, this Court has had to intervene at least half a dozen times to clarify how Smith works. See, e.g., Tandon

, ante, at p. 1; Roman Cath

olic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo , 592 U. S. ___ (2020) ( per curiam ); High Plains Harvest Church v. Polis , 592 U. S ___ (2020). To be sure, this Court began to resolve at least some of the confusion surrounding Smith ’s application in Tandon . But Tandon treated the symptoms, not the under

lying ailment. We owe it to the parties, to religious believ

ers, and to our colleagues on the lower courts to cure the problem this Court created. It’s not as if we don’t know the right answer. Smith has been criticized since the day it was decided. No fewer than10 FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA

G ORSUCH , J., concurring in judgment ten Justices—including six sitting Justices—have ques

tioned its fidelity to the Constitution. See ante, at 9–10 (A LITO , J., concurring in judgment); ante , at 1 (B ARRETT , J., concurring). The Court granted certiorari in this case to resolve its fate. The parties and amici responded with over 80 thoughtful briefs addressing every angle of the problem. J USTICE A LITO has offered a comprehensive opinion ex

plaining why Smith should be overruled. And not a single Justice has lifted a pen to defend the decision. So what are we waiting for? We hardly need to “wrestle” today with every conceivable question that might follow from recognizing Smith was wrong. See ante, at 2 (B ARRETT , J., concurring). To be sure, any time this Court turns from misguided precedent back toward the Constitution’s original public meaning, chal

lenging questions may arise across a large field of cases and controversies. But that’s no ex cuse for refusing to apply the original public meaning in the dispute actually before us. Rather than adhere to Smith until we settle on some “grand unified theory” of the Free Exercise Clause for all future cases until the end of time, see American Legion v. Ameri

can Humanist Assn. , 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (plurality opinion) (slip op., at 24), the Court should overrule it now, set us back on the correct course , and address each case as it comes. What possible benefit does the majority see in its studi

ous indecision about Smith when the costs are so many? The particular appeal before us arises at the intersection of public accommodations laws and the First Amendment; it involves same-sex couples and the Catholic Church. Per

haps our colleagues believe today’s circuitous path will at least steer the Court around the controversial subject mat

ter and avoid “picking a side.” But refusing to give CSS the benefit of what we know to be the correct interpretation of the Constitution is picking a side. Smith committed a con

stitutional error. Only we c an fix it. Dodging the question11 Cite as: 593 U. S. ____ (2021)

G ORSUCH , J., concurring in judgment today guarantees it will recur tomorrow. These cases will keep coming until the Court musters the fortitude to supply an answer. Respectfully, it should have done so today.