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Page Number: 36.0

14 

FULTON v. PHILADELPHIA 

ALITO, J., concurring in judgment
ALITO, J., concurring in judgment 

Other decisions also accepted 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  offend  the  constitutional  re-
quirement for governmental neutrality 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 contributions to Social Security were 
constitutional because they were “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 governmental 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)