Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-123_g3bi.pdf
Page Number: 81

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

59 

ALITO, J., concurring in judgment
ALITO, 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  Ho-
sanna-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 exception” 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  physical  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.