Court Opinion

ID: 9425866
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:16:01.779569+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:58.060258
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Douglas,
dissenting.
The sole question on the merits is whether the provision of the Internal Revenue Code, 26 U. S. C. § 3402, which requires employers to deduct and withhold from wages federal income taxes, is constitutional as applied to employees, who on religious grounds object to the withholding taxes on their salaries which represent that portion of the federal budget allocated to military expenditures.1 They invoke the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, as they are Quakers who are opposed to participation in war in any form and who claim that this method of collection directly forecloses their ability freely to *13express that opposition, i. e., to bear witness to their religious scruples.
There is no evidence that questions the sincerity of the employees’ religious beliefs. Nor is there any issue raised as to whether that religious belief would give the employees a defense against ultimate payment of the tax. The District Court held that the withholding was unconstitutional as to the employees, 368 F. Supp. 1176, a conclusion with which I agree.
The withholding process2 forecloses the employees from bearing witness against the use of these monthly deductions for military purposes. Under the opinion of this Court, they are deprived of bearing witness to their opposition to war — these withheld portions of their salaries pay the entire tax and they therefore have “no alternative legal remedy,” a circumstance which distinguishes both Enochs v. Williams Packing Co., 370 U. S. 1, and Bob Jones University v. Simon, 416 U. S. 725.
Quakers with true religious scruples against participating in war may no more be barred from protesting the payment of taxes to support war than they can be forcibly inducted into the Armed Forces and required to carry a *14gun, and yet be denied all opportunity to state their religious views against participation. See United States v. Seeger, 380 U. S. 163. The Court misses the entire point of the present controversy. The employees are barred from protesting these monthly deductions under the Court’s opinion. In Enochs v. Williams Packing Co., supra, and Bob Jones University v. Simon, supra, taxpayers sought to enjoin the collection of taxes by any means whatever, while the taxpayers litigated the question whether the taxes were due at all. Here the employees challenge the withholding law as depriving them of their one and only chance of contesting the constitutionality of the withholding of the tax as applied to them. So, unlike Enochs and Bob Jones University, there is no remedy by way of refund.3
The religious belief which the Government violates here is that the employees must bear active witness to their objections to their support of war efforts. Dr. Edwin Bronner, who qualified as an expert on the history of *15Quakerism, gave testimony which, as summarized by the District Court, 368 F. Supp., at 1178, stated: “[M]ost Quakers have considered it an integral part of their faith[4] to bear witness to the beliefs which they hold. It has always been the prevailing view that simple preaching of one's beliefs is not sufficient, and that one’s actions must accord with and give expression to one’s beliefs. Many of the employees of the AFSC, including particularly appellees’ Cleveland and Cadwallader, share this belief, and for these employees, the operation of the withholding tax, which leaves them no option as to the payment of the taxes which they conscientiously question, operates as a direct abridgment of the expression and implementation of deeply cherished religious beliefs.”
If we are faithful to the command of the First Amendment, we would honor that religious belief. I have not bowed to the view of the majority that “some compelling state interest” will warrant an infringement of the Free Exercise Clause. Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398, 406-407; Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U. S. 599, 603. I have previously dissented from that position and opposed amending by judicial construction the plain command of the Free Exercise Clause. See Sherbert v. Verner, supra, at 410-413; McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U. S. 420, 575-576; Arlan’s Department Store v. Kentucky, 371 U. S. 218.
The Anti-Injunction Act, 26 U. S. C. § 7421 (a), is no barrier. No “assessment or collection of any tax” is restrained, only one method of collection is barred, the *16Government being left free to use all other means at its disposal. Moreover, to construe the Act as the Court construes it does not avoid a constitutional question but directly raises one. The Act, read as literally as the Court reads it, plainly violates the First Amendment as applied to the facts of this case, for “no law” prohibiting the free exercise of religion includes every kind of law, including a law staying the hand of a judge who enjoins a law for the collection of taxes that trespasses on the First Amendment.
The power of Congress to ordain and establish inferior courts (Lockerty v. Phillips, 319 U. S. 182, 187) has not to this date been assumed or held to mean that Congress could require a federal court to take action in violation of the Constitution. Thus suspension of the writ of habeas corpus is restricted to “Cases of Rebellion or Invasion” where “the public Safety may require it.” Art. I, § 9, cl. 2. And when it comes to the First Amendment and the free exercise of religion, the mandate is that “Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting” it. The Anti-Injunction Act is a “law”; and the Constitution gives no such preference to tax laws as to permit them to override religious scruples. May Congress enact a law that prohibits a minister from preaching if his taxes are in arrears? Or that disallows the making of a protest to a tax assessment even though the assessment and payment violate one’s religious scruples? Until today, I would have thought not. The First Amendment, as applied to the States by the Fourteenth, bars a tax on the conduct of a religious exercise by a minority even though that religious exercise is obnoxious to the majority. Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105. Dicta to the effect that an allegation of unconstitutionality is irrelevant under the Anti-Injunction Act (Bailey v. George, 259 U. S. 16, 20) — which the Court today elevates to a holding — were based on the premise that there *17was an alternative remedy to the unconstitutional actions. Here, as demonstrated, there is no other remedy. A refund suit is of no value, since the religious scruples which these taxpayers invoke relate to their inability to protest the payment, not to the use of the taxes themselves for military purposes.
I would affirm the judgment below.

 The District Court found that 51.6% was a reasonable estimate of the proportion of the federal budget expended for military and war purposes based on the appropriations made by Congress in the calendar year 1968, according to a computation by the Friends Committee on National Legislation.

 Objections to withholding are not restricted to Quakers. Some federal judges have passionately opposed the withholding of taxes on their salaries, not on the basis that the tax is unconstitutional as was once held (see O’Malley v. Woodrough, 307 U. S. 277, overruling Miles v. Graham, 268 U. S. 501), but rather on the ground that the loss of the use of the sums deducted during the year preceding the April 15 due date is a diminution of their compensation against the command of Art. Ill, § 1, which provides in part: “The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.” Whatever may be the merits of that contention, the command of the First Amendment permits of no exceptions, for it states: “Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise” of religion.

 In Bob Jones University, the Court expressly stated: “This is not a case in which an aggrieved party has no access at all to judicial review. Were that true, our conclusion might well be different.” 416 U. S., at 746. Similarly, in Commissioner v. “Americans United” Inc., 416 U. S. 752, the Court examined at length the claim that the respondent there had “no alternative legal remedy,” ultimately concluding that the claim was untrue since a refund action for FUTA taxes, while slow and unsatisfactory from the taxpayer’s point of view, would still provide a forum in which judicial review of the legality of the actions of the IRS could be obtained. Id., at 761-762.
In the present case, since the taxpayers do not claim that they are entitled to a refund (conceding that the Government could legitimately collect the tax by some method), a refund suit would be summarily dismissed without ever reaching the merits of their claim that the particular method of collection violated their free exercise rights. This situation appears, then, to fall squarely within the question left open in Bob Jones University, supra; the Court now apparently resolves that question sub süentio.

 “Friends will ever be concerned to relate their religious insights to the realities of international life. Opportunities for courageous action and for the expression of invincible good will remain under any political system. Whatever the system and whatever the situation that calls for decision, Friends are called upon to make their witness.” Faith and Practice, the Book of Discipline of the New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends 42 (1968).