Opinion ID: 167590
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Applicability of the Free Exercise Clause to Executive Action

Text: 24 Chief Palmer first offers the intriguing assertion that the Free Exercise Clause protects citizens only from enactment or enforcement of any law, regulation or ordinance, and not from the actions or decisions of an executive official, such as the decision to move Officer Shrum to the day shift and to forbid him from trading shifts with another officer. This argument is predicated on a narrow reading of the first and fifth words of the First Amendment:  Congress shall make no law . . . . U.S. Const., Amend. I. Congress is the legislative branch, and the Amendment is directed at the making of law. Even after incorporation of the First Amendment against the states, Appellant evidently is arguing, the Amendment applies only to federal, state, and local legislative activity and the direct enforcement thereof, and not to the independent exercise of executive functions. 25 The Supreme Court has never explicitly held that the Free Exercise Clause applies to executive action, though it has assumed on countless occasions that it does. See, e.g., Lyng v. NW. Indian Cemetery Protective Ass'n, 485 U.S. 439, 108 S.Ct. 1319, 99 L.Ed.2d 534 (1988) (decision by Forest Service to build a road through territory sacred to certain Indian tribes); Thomas v. Review Bd. of Ind. Employment Sec. Div., 450 U.S. 707, 101 S.Ct. 1425, 67 L.Ed.2d 624 (1981) (decision by state unemployment compensation commission to deny benefits to a worker unemployed on account of religious scruples); Cruz v. Beto, 405 U.S. 319, 92 S.Ct. 1079, 31 L.Ed.2d 263 (1972) (administrative actions by prison officials affecting Buddhist prisoner); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 407, 83 S.Ct. 1790, 10 L.Ed.2d 965 (1963) (denial of unemployment compensation); cf. Pickering, supra (free speech claim arising from executive personnel action); see also Axson-Flynn v. Johnson, 356 F.3d 1277 (10th Cir.2004) (reviewing executive action under the Free Exercise Clause). Professor Leonard Levy posed the question without offering any clear resolution: 26 [T]he First Amendment, when read literally, raises the question whether any special significance should be attached to the fact that the prohibition on power was imposed exclusively upon Congress instead of upon the government of the United States. Did the specification of Congress imply that restraints were not intended to be imposed upon other federal authorities? 27 Leonard W. Levy, Legacy of Suppression: Freedom of Speech and Press in Early American History 233-34 (1960) (emphasis in original). 28 The answer to Chief Palmer's argument and Professor Levy's question, we believe, is that the First Amendment applies to exercises of executive authority no less than it does to the passage of legislation. The drafters' use of the term Congress was a result of two structural decisions: to limit the reach of the First Amendment (as well as other protections of personal rights in the first eight amendments) to the federal government, and to set forth these freedoms as a freestanding Bill of Rights, separate from the main body of the constitutional document. Neither of these evinced any intention to confine the Amendment to actions of the legislative branch. 29 The early state constitutions, on which the First Amendment was patterned, uniformly applied their versions of the Free Exercise Clause to all branches of government. See The Complete Bill of Rights: The Drafts, Debates, Sources, & Origins 13-52 (Neil H. Cogan ed., 1997) (quoting the religious freedom provisions in the constitutions and charters of all thirteen original states). The Delaware Declaration of Rights of 1776, § 2, for example, provided that no authority can or ought to be vested in, or assumed by any power whatever that shall in any case interfere with, or in any manner controul the right of conscience in the free exercise of religious worship. Id. at 15 (emphasis added). The New York Constitution of 1777, § XXXVIII, provided [t]hat the free Exercise and Enjoyment of religious Profession and Worship, without Discrimination or Preference, shall forever hereafter be allowed within this State to all Mankind. Id. at 26. The Pennsylvania Constitution of 1790, Art. IX, § 3, adopted contemporaneously with the First Amendment, provided that no human authority can, in any case whatever, controul or interfere with the rights of conscience. Id. at 33 (emphasis added). 30 The first draft debated in the House of Representatives of what was later to be the Religion Clauses read: No religion shall be established by law, nor shall the equal rights of conscience be infringed. 1 Annals of Cong. 757 (Aug. 15, 1789) (Joseph Gales ed., 1834). It was proposed as an amendment to Article I, § 9, which sets forth limitations on the powers of the federal government. The proposal came under criticism because of the fear that it might be interpreted as a limitation on state governments, many of which then had establishments of religion of some sort. Moreover, for independent reasons, the First Congress decided that the proposed amendments should be attached to the end of the document, rather than interpolated within it; this exacerbated the federalism problem because it was only the placement of the religion amendment within Article I, § 9 that confined its reach in any way to the federal government. Madison suggested that the problem could be most easily resolved by adding the word national to the proposal, so that it would read that no national religion shall be established by law, 1 Annals of Cong. 758-59, but this idea encountered opposition from those still sensitive to the consolidationist implications of the word national. See id. at 759 (statement of Rep. Gerry). 4 The solution was to employ the word Congress, thus making clear that the limitations of what is now the First Amendment did not apply to the States. (That limitation to the federal government, of course, was later abrogated by incorporation of the First Amendment against the States through the medium of the Fourteenth Amendment. Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303-304, 60 S.Ct. 900, 84 L.Ed. 1213 (1940).) As this history shows, there was no intention to confine the reach of the First Amendment to the legislative branch. Indeed, the first time anyone in Congress explicitly argued that the strictures of the First Amendment applied only to the passage of a law — in 1836, in connection with the right of petition 5 — the suggestion was roundly rejected (with ridicule, according to the leading scholar on constitutional debates in Congress). See David P. Currie, The Constitution in Congress: Descent Into the Maelstrom, 1829-1861, at 9 (2005). 31 One scholar has argued that the legislative history of the Establishment Clause shows that [t]he word `Congress' was intentionally inserted to limit the scope of the restrictions on the government to that single branch. Mark. P. Denbeaux, The First Word of the First Amendment, 80 Nw. U.L.Rev. 1156, 1169-70 (1986). Professor Denbeaux bases his argument on a remark by Representative Huntington of Connecticut, a state that at the time had an establishment of religion in the form of compulsory taxation for the support of religion. See Thomas J. Curry, The First Freedoms: Church and State in America to the Passage of the First Amendment 178, 183-84 (1986). Huntington feared that the original version of the religion amendment would lead to federal lawsuits preventing enforcement of the bylaws that had been enacted for a support of ministers, or building of places of worship. 1 Annals of Cong. 758. The substitution of the word Congress came shortly after Huntington's remark and can be seen as a response to it. See id. at 796. We cannot agree with Professor Denbeaux's interpretation of this incident. Huntington's concern stemmed from uncertainty over whether the proposal would extend to state establishments, not over any particular concern about a particular branch of the federal government. At this juncture, the Judiciary Act had not yet been enacted, and Huntington presumably assumed that the federal courts would be vested with the full jurisdiction implied by Article III — to all cases arising under the Constitution. He thus worried that an opponent of the Connecticut establishment could go to federal court, invoke the proposed language no religion shall be established by law, and obtain an injunction or other relief preventing enforcement of the obligation to pay for support of ministers and buildings of worship. 6 His concern was satisfied by confining the reach of the religion proposal to the federal government. Indeed, after the proposal was further amended to forbid any law respecting the establishment of religion, which prohibited the federal government both from establishing religion at the federal level and from interfering with establishments at the state level, see Akhil R. Amar, The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction 32-33 (1998), confining the reach of the amendment to the legislative branch would have been perverse from Huntington's point of view. 32 Moreover, even if the First Amendment itself applied narrowly only to Congress and only to the making of laws, this would not be the end of the matter. The Fifth Amendment, which undoubtedly applies to the executive branch, provides that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. This means, among other less obvious things, that executive officials cannot abridge a person's liberty (including freedom of religion) except in accordance with law. See Edward S. Corwin, The Doctrine of Due Process of Law Before the Civil War, 24 Harv. L.Rev. 366 (1911); Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579, 646, 72 S.Ct. 863, 96 L.Ed. 1153 (1952) (Jackson.J., concurring). Thus, if the First Amendment forbids the making of law that infringes the free exercise of religion, and the Due Process Clause forbids the executive from taking away liberties except pursuant to law, it follows that the First Amendment protects against executive as well as legislative abridgement. Indeed, because executive action that bears upon the private rights of individuals is almost always grounded in some statutory authority, a challenge to the executive action may be characterized as an as-applied challenge to the statute. Cf. Denbeaux, 80 Nw. U.L.Rev. at 1157 n. 1. In substance, Officer Shrum's challenge to the executive actions of Chief Palmer is a constitutional challenge to the statutory grant of power to the Chief of Police to supervise employees, as applied in the circumstances of this case. 33 For all of these reasons, we reject the argument that Chief Palmer's actions are not covered by the First Amendment because they did not constitute the enactment or enforcement of any law, regulation, or ordinance.