Court Opinion

ID: 9722462
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:33:04.202587+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:35.545110
License: Public Domain

HUNTER, Justice,
dissenting.
In order to resolve the issue in the case at bar, it is not necessary to delve into Indiana law, including prior decisions of this Court and the Court of Appeals, regarding what does or does not constitute “good cause in connection with the work,” Ind. Code § 22-4-15-1 (Burns Supp.1978), for one voluntarily terminating his employment. Respondent on transfer is not complaining that petitioner has acted improperly under the statute. Rather, the issue here is whether respondent, Eddie C. Thomas, was properly disqualified for unemployment benefits in light of his claim that this disqualification violates his First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of his religion.
The case of Sherbert v. Verner, (1963) 374 U.S. 398, 83 S.Ct. 1790, 10 L.Ed.2d 965, would appear to be controlling here. In that case a Seventh-Day Adventist was fired by her employer and thereafter refused other employment because of her refusal to work on Saturday, the Sabbath day of her faith. The South Carolina Employment Security Commission refused Sherbert unemployment compensation because of her refusal to work Saturdays.
In the instant case, Thomas, a Jehovah’s Witness, quit his job with Blaw-Knox Foundry & Machinery, Inc. shortly after being transferred from the roll foundry to the turret line, an area of the plant directly involved in armaments manufacture. The referee, whose decision was adopted by the Indiana Employment Security Review Board, found that Thomas “did quit due to his religious convictions.” Thomas v. Review Board of Ind. Emp. Sec. Div., (1978) Ind.App., 381 N.E.2d 888, 890.
The majority opinion observes “significant differences” between Thomas’s situation and Adell Sherbert’s situation. The majority correctly notes that the United *1135States Supreme Court emphasized the general discriminatory effect of the disqualification in Sherbert v. Verner, supra, because South Carolina expressly saved “the Sunday worshipper from having to make the kind of choice which we here hold infringes the Sabbatarian’s religious liberty.” 374 U.S. at 406, 83 S.Ct. at 1795, 10 L.Ed.2d at 971. To overemphasize this discriminatory factor is to miss the import of the Sherbert decision.
The Sherbert case did not turn on the discriminatory effect of the disqualification. The United States Supreme Court has noted that the Sherbert
“decision turned upon the fact that ‘[t]he ruling forces her to choose between following the precepts of her religion and forfeiting benefits, on the one hand, and abandoning one of the precepts of her religion in order to accept work, on the other hand.’ ” [citation omitted.] McDaniel v. Paty, 435 U.S. 618, 633, 98 S.Ct. 1322, 1331, 55 L.Ed.2d 593, 605. (Separate opinion by Brennan, J., in which Marshall, J., joined.)
The District Court in Lincoln v. True, (W.D. Ky.1975) 408 F.Supp. 22 made a similar conclusion and it is my belief that that case was properly decided. Thomas, Adell Sherbert and Ethel Lincoln, a Jehovah’s Witness who quit her job with a tobacco company, where she had worked for twenty-one years, because of her religious convictions, were all forced to the same choice.
An inquiry by this Court into whether Thomas’s convictions are religious would be improper in this case. As stated above, the facts as found by the referee, and as adopted by the Review Board, indicate that Thomas did indeed quit his job due to his religious convictions. Furthermore, this Court should not pick apart a religious adherent’s beliefs because he is “struggling” with his position or because his beliefs are not eloquently stated. Neither should we distinguish between literal and interpretive readings of religious scriptures nor distinguish among so-called “cardinal tenets” of various religions.
I am cognizant of the limited nature of the decision in Sherbert v. Verner, supra.
“Our holding today is only that South Carolina may not constitutionally apply the eligibility provisions so as to constrain a worker to abandon his religious convictions respecting the day of rest.” 374 U.S. at 410, 83 S.Ct. at 1797, 10 L.Ed.2d at 974.
In fact the high Court said:
“Nor do we, by our decision today, declare the existence of a constitutional right to unemployment benefits on the part of all persons whose religious convictions are the cause of their unemployment.” 374 U.S. at 409-10, 83 S.Ct. at 1797, 10 L.Ed.2d at 974.
But in their next sentence the Court withdrew from that broad disclaimer.
“This is not a case in which an employee’s religious convictions serve to make him a nonproductive member of society.” 374 U.S. at 410, 83 S.Ct. at 1797, 10 L.Ed.2d at 974.
Like Adell Sherbert, Eddie Thomas was willing to work in a job which would not conflict with his religious convictions. He stated that he was willing to return to the Blaw-Knox roll foundry, which had been closed down precipitating his transfer. A reviewing court cannot say when and in what job a religious adherent compromises his beliefs as the dissent to the Court of Appeals decision in Thomas, supra, suggests. The fact that Thomas is willing to return to a neutral position at Blaw Knox no more diminishes his religious convictions than his willingness to work at another level in the military-industrial chain, such as a raw material supplier. Thus Thomas’s religious convictions do not “serve to make him a non-productive member of society.” Sherbert, supra, 374 U.S. at 410, 83 S.Ct. at 1797, 10 L.Ed.2d at 974. We are dealing here with a person’s action pursuant to his religious beliefs, and cannot properly tell a litigant that he has misinterpreted his own beliefs.
Comments in the dissent to the Court of Appeals decision bring to mind Isaac Backus’s admonition regarding religious intolerance in colonial Massachusetts in his com*1136prehensive Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty, written in 1773, a time of debate which fashioned our religious liberties.
“Yes, some minorities are tolerated in Massachusetts; but some are not, and the procedure of deciding which are and which are not worthy of this privilege gives to a group of civil magistrates — a body which, since each man must speak for himself before God, cannot in the nature of things represent anyone in matters of religion — the power of passing judgment on ‘the springs of their neighbors’ actions.’ You are condemned, he told the Massachusetts magistrates, out of your own mouths, for you say that England cannot in right tax beyond her own domain: “have we not as good right to say you do the same thing, and so that wherein you judge others you condemn yourselves?’ ” [Emphasis in original.]1
Theologians have made similar statements indicating that living pursuant to religious convictions is a matter of individual conscience and not a response to objective, doctrinaire theory on which strangers — be they church elders, administrative referees or judges — may pass judgment.
“[Religious] freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that in religious matters no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own conscience; nor is he to be impeded from acting according to his own conscience, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.” [Emphasis added.]2
“A sense of dignity of the human person has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the consciousness of contemporary man, and the demand is increasingly made that men should act on their own judgment, enjoying and making use of a responsible freedom, not driven by coercion but motivated by a sense of duty.” [Emphasis added.]3
An individual in this nation should be free to seek religious truth and duty in a manner which accords with his or her nature and cannot be denied the benefits of public welfare legislation thereby.
The Court of Appeals decision in this case in no way fosters the establishment of the Jehovah’s Witnesses religion in this state. It merely reflects “the governmental obligation of neutrality in the face of religious differences.” Sherbert v. Verner, supra, 374 U.S. at 409, 83 S.Ct. at 1797, 10 L.Ed.2d at 974. The dissent in Thomas, supra, and the majority opinion here raise the same argument that was raised by Justice Harlan in his dissent in Sherbert, supra, which was specifically rejected by Justice Brennan’s majority opinion.
For the foregoing reasons, I believe the opinion of the Court of Appeals should stand and would, therefore, deny transfer.

. Paraphrased in B. Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Belknap Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1972, p. 266-267.

. Dignitatis Humanae, No. 2, found in A.F.C. DeAlbornoz, Religious Liberty, Sheed & Ward, New York 1967, p. 12.

.Dignitatis Humanae, No. 1, DeAlbornoz, supra, p. 15.