Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-123_g3bi.pdf
Page Number: 38.0

16 

FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA 

ALITO, J., concurring in judgment
ALITO, 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 

—————— 

25 JUSTICE BARRETT makes the surprising claim 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 there really were such a “longstanding 
[pre-Smith] tenet,” one would expect to find cases stating that rule, but 
JUSTICE BARRETT does not cite even one such case.  Instead, she claims 
to find support by reading between the 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 suggest