Court Opinion

ID: 9431558
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:32:34.395311+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:29.001462
License: Public Domain

Justice Blackmun,
with whom Justice O’Connor joins, concurring in the judgment.
The Texas statute at issue touches upon values that underlie three different Clauses of the First Amendment: the Free Exercise Clause, the Establishment Clause, and the Press Clause. As indicated by the number of opinions issued in this case today, harmonizing these several values is not an easy task.
The Free Exercise Clause value suggests that a State may not impose a tax on spreading the gospel. See Follett v. McCormick, 321 U. S. 573 (1944), and Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 (1943). The Establishment Clause value suggests that a State may not give a tax break to those who spread the gospel that it does not also give to others who actively might advocate disbelief in religion. See Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U. S. 488, 495 (1961); Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing, 330 U. S. 1, 15-16 (1947). The Press Clause value suggests that a State may not tax the sale of some publications, but not others, based on their content, absent a compelling reason for doing so. See Arkansas Writers’ Project, Inc. v. Ragland, 481 U. S. 221, 231 (1987).
It perhaps is fairly easy to reconcile the Free Exercise and Press Clause values. If the Free Exercise Clause suggests that a State may not tax the sale of religious literature by a religious organization, this fact alone would give a State a compelling reason to exclude this category of sales from an otherwise general sales tax. In this respect, I agree gener*27ally with what Justice Sc alia says in Part II of his dissenting opinion.
I find it more difficult to reconcile in this case the Free Exercise and Establishment Clause values. The Free Exercise Clause suggests that a special exemption for religious books is required. The Establishment Clause suggests that a special exemption for religious books is forbidden. This tension between mandated and prohibited religious exemptions is well recognized. See, e. g., Walz v. Tax Comm’n of New York City, 397 U. S. 664, 668-669 (1970). Of course, identifying the problem does not resolve it.
Justice Brennan’s opinion, in its Part IV, would resolve the tension between the Free Exercise and Establishment Clause values simply by subordinating the Free Exercise value, even, it seems to me, at the expense of longstanding, precedents. See ante, at 21-25 (repudiating Follett and Murdock to the extent inconsistent with the newfound proposition that a State generally may tax the sale of a Bible by a church). Justice Scalia’s opinion, conversely, would'subordinate the Establishment Clause value. This position, it seems to me, runs afoul of the previously settled notion that government may not favor religious belief over disbelief. See, e. g., Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 53 (1985); Welsh v. United States, 398 U. S. 333, 356 (1970) (Harlan, J., concurring in result); Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U. S. 97, 103-104 (1968); Abington School District v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203, 218, 220 (1963); Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U. S., at 495.
Perhaps it is a vain desire, but I would like to decide the present case without necessarily sacrificing either the Free Exercise Clause value or the Establishment Clause value. It is possible for a State to write a tax-exemption statute consistent with both values: for example, a state statute might exempt the sale not only of religious literature distributed by a religious organization but also of philosophical literature distributed by nonreligious organizations devoted to such matters of conscience as life and death, good and evil, being *28and nonbeing, right and wrong. Such a statute, moreover, should survive Press Clause scrutiny because its exemption would be narrowly tailored to meet the compelling interests that underlie both the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses.
To recognize this possible reconciliation of the competing First Amendment considerations is one thing; to impose it upon a State as its only legislative choice is something else. Justice Scalia rightly points out, post, at 42, that the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses often appear like Scylla and Charybdis, leaving a State little room to maneuver between them. The Press Clause adds yet a third hazard to a State’s safe passage through the legislative waters concerning the taxation of books and journals. We in the Judiciary must be wary of interpreting these three constitutional Clauses in a manner that negates the legislative role altogether.
I believe we can avoid most of these difficulties with a narrow resolution of the case before us. We need not decide today the extent to which the Free Exercise Clause requires a tax exemption for the sale of religious literature by a religious organization; in other words, defining the ultimate scope of Follett and Murdock may be left for another day. We need decide here only whether a tax exemption limited to the sale of religious literature by religious organizations violates the Establishment Clause. I conclude that it does.
In this case, by confining the tax exemption exclusively to the sale of religious publications, Texas engaged in preferential support for the communication of religious messages. Although some forms of accommodating religion are constitutionally permissible, see Corporation of Presiding Bishop of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. Amos, 483 U. S. 327 (1987), this one surely is not. A statutory preference for the dissemination of religious ideas offends our most basic understanding of what the Establishment Clause is all about and hence is constitutionally intolerable. See Wallace *29v. Jaffree, 472 U. S., at 69-70 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment); Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U. S., at 103-104. Accordingly, whether or not Follett and Murdock prohibit taxing the sale of religious literature, the Establishment Clause prohibits a tax exemption limited to the sale of religious literature. Cf. Estate of Thornton v. Caldor, Inc., 472 U. S. 703 (1985) (the Establishment Clause prohibits a statute that grants employees an unqualified right not to work on their Sabbath), and Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Comm’n of Fla., 480 U. S. 136, 145-146, and n. 11 (1987) (consistent-with Caldor, the Free Exercise Clause prohibits denying unemployment compensation to employees who refuse to work on their Sabbath).
At oral argument, appellees suggested that the statute at issue here exempted from taxation the sale of atheistic literature distributed by an atheistic organization. Tr. of Oral Arg. 33. If true, this statute might survive Establishment Clause scrutiny, as well as Free Exercise and Press Clause scrutiny. But, as appellees were quick to concede at argument, the record contains nothing to support this facially implausible interpretation of the statute. Ibid. Thus, constrained to construe this Texas statute as exempting religious literature alone, I concur in the holding that it contravenes the Establishment Clause, and in remanding the case for further proceedings not inconsistent with this holding.