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Page Number: 34.0

12 

FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA 

ALITO, J., concurring in judgment
ALITO, 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-exercise 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  been  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 decisions, 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 fraudulent