Opinion ID: 1324254
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Restoring Sherbert and Yoder

Text: The text of RFRA explicitly states that the purpose of the statute is to restore the compelling interest test as set forth in [ Sherbert and Yoder ]. 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb(b) (emphasis added). The text refers separately to substantially burden and the exercise of religion, but it says nothing about restoring the definition of these terms as used in Sherbert and Yoder. In the years after Sherbert and Yoder, the Supreme Court applied the compelling interest test to fewer and fewer Free Exercise claims under the First Amendment. For example, in Goldman, 475 U.S. at 505, 507-08, 106 S.Ct. 1310, the Court conceded that a military regulation banning civilian headgear implicated the First Amendment rights of an Orthodox Jew who sought to wear a yarmulke, but then upheld the regulation after minimal scrutiny due to the great deference [owed] the professional judgment of military authorities concerning the relative importance of a particular military interest. In O'Lone, 482 U.S. at 349, 107 S.Ct. 2400, the Court refused to require that prison regulations be justified by a compelling interest, instead demanding only that they be reasonably related to legitimate penological interests. See also Bowen v. Roy, 476 U.S. 693, 707, 106 S.Ct. 2147, 90 L.Ed.2d 735 (1986) (Burger, J., for plurality) (compelling interest test not applicable in enforcing facially neutral and uniformly applicable requirement for the administration of welfare programs); Lyng, 485 U.S. at 454, 108 S.Ct. 1319 (compelling interest test not applicable where government interferes with religious exercise through the use of its own land). In other cases, the Court purported to apply the compelling interest test, but in fact applied a watered-down version of the scrutiny employed in Sherbert and Yoder. Rather than demanding, as it had in Sherbert and Yoder, that the particular governmental interest at stake be compelling, the Court accepted extremely general definitions of the government's interest. For example, in United States v. Lee, 455 U.S. 252, 102 S.Ct. 1051, 71 L.Ed.2d 127 (1982), the Court balanced an individual's interest in a religious exemption from social security taxes against the broad public interest in maintaining a sound tax system. Id. at 260, 102 S.Ct. 1051. Likewise, the plurality in Roy balanced an individual's objection to the provision of a social security number against the government's general interest in preventing fraud in [government] benefits programs. 476 U.S. at 709, 106 S.Ct. 2147; see also David B. Tillotson, Free Exercise in the 1980s: A Rollback of Protections, 24 U.S.F. L.Rev. 505, 520 (1990) (The Court has either defined the Government's interest so broadly that no individual's interest could possibly outweigh it or, more recently, has... simply refused to weigh individual challenges to uniformly applicable and neutral statutes against any government interest, notwithstanding Sherbert. ). Smith, in which the Court refused to apply the compelling governmental interest test to a generally applicable law burdening the exercise of religion, was the last straw. In direct response, Congress enacted RFRA, directing the federal courts to restore the compelling interest test that had been applied in Sherbert and Yoder in all cases where free exercise of religion is substantially burdened. 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb(b). That is, by restoring the compelling interest test, Congress restored the application of strict scrutiny, as applied in Sherbert and Yoder, to all government actions substantially burdening religion, and rejected the restrictive approach to free exercise claims taken in Lyng, Roy, Goldman, O'Lone, and Lee. But this directive does not specify what government actions substantially burden religion, thereby triggering the compelling interest test. RFRA did not restore any definition of substantial burden. Because Congress did not define substantial burden, either directly or by reference to pre- Smith case law, we should define (and in fact have defined) that term according to its ordinary meaning.