A. Adams & C. Emmerich, A Nation Dedicated to Religious Liberty: The Constitutional Heritage of the Religion Clauses 14 (1990) (hereinafter Adams & Emmerich).
[4] The State of Oregon won on the basis that the drug laws were "non-discriminatory laws of general applicability. Const., Declaration of Rights, Art. Regardless of the state of the legislative record, RFRA cannot be considered remedial, preventive legislation, if those terms are to have any meaning. Thus, it had political significance because of the religious aspect of the legal fight. While this separation of powers aspect did not occasion the widespread resistance which was caused by the proposal’s threat to the federal balance, it nonetheless attracted the attention of various Members. . Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Virginia responded by exempting such objectors from religious assessments.
But the protections afforded by those enactments are in fact more consistent with Smith’s interpretation of free exercise than with the dissent’s understanding of it. Ibid. 1409, 1415 (1990) (emphasis added); see also Hamburger, A Constitutional Right of Religious Exemption: An Historical Perspective, 60 Geo.
Pp. Finally, all shared the conviction that “ ‘true religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness.’ ” Curry, The First Freedoms, at 219 (quoting Continental Congress); see Adams & Emmerich at 72 (“The Founders . New York’s Constitution, on the other hand, required voters to be able to read and write English.
558, 559 (RI 1990). Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., App., at 115 (statement of Rep. Farnsworth) (The Amendment was “given its quietus by a postponement for two months, where it slept the sleep that knows no waking”). I shall not restate what has been said in other opinions, which have demonstrated that Smith is gravely at odds with our earlier free exercise precedents. .
Congress could not constitutionally enact RFRA because the law was not designed to have "congruence and proportionality" with the substantive rights that the Court had defined. by J. Joseph Curran, Jr., Attorney General of Maryland, Jack Schwartz and Steven M. Sullivan, Assistant Attorneys General, and by the Attorneys General for their respective States as follows: Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Scott Harshbarger of Massachusetts, and Dennis C. Vacco of New York; for members of the Virginia House of Delegates et al. Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 52–55 (1985). Pp. [5] Indeed, the author of Simon’s Executors could well have written Smith: “[C]onsiderations of policy address themselves with propriety to the legislature, and not to a magistrate whose course is prescribed not by discretion, but rules already established.” 2 Pen. v. Winn, Westside Community Board of Ed.
The dissent’s final source of claimed historical support consists of statements of certain of the Framers in the context of debates about proposed legislative enactments or debates over general principles (not in connection with the drafting of State or Federal Constitutions). ); id., at 284 (“[N]ationwide [suspension of literacy tests] may be reasonably thought appropriate when Congress acts against an evil such as racial discrimination which in varying degrees manifests itself in every part of the country”) (opinion of Stewart, J.
Curry, The First Freedoms, at 219 (“The vast majority of Americans assumed that theirs was a Christian, i. e. Protestant, country, and they automatically expected that government would uphold the commonly agreed on Protestant ethos and morality”). Under it, “Congress, and not the courts, was to judge whether or not any of the privileges or immunities were not secured to citizens in the several States.” Flack, supra, at 64. Lynch v. Donnelly, 465 U. S. 668, 673 (1984) (“The Court’s interpretation of the Establishment Clause has comported with what history reveals was the contemporaneous understanding of its guarantees”); School Dist. I therefore join Justice O’Connor’s dissent, with the exception of the first paragraph of Part I.
The dissent’s extravagant claim that the historical record shows Smith to have been wrong should be compared with the assessment of the most prominent scholarly critic of Smith, who, after an extensive review of the historical record, was willing to venture no more than that “constitutionally compelled exemptions [from generally applicable laws regulating conduct] were within the contemplation of the framers and ratifiers as a possible interpretation of the free exercise clause.” McConnell, The Origins and Historical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion, 103 Harv.
); id., at 216 (“Congress could have determined that racial prejudice is prevalent throughout the Nation, and that literacy tests unduly lend themselves to discriminatory application, either conscious or unconscious”) (opinion of Harlan, J. Although the Framers may not have asked precisely the questions about religious liberty that we do today, the historical record indicates that they believed that the Constitution affirmatively protects religious free exercise and that it limits the government’s ability to intrude on religious practice. 1905).
Four Members of the Court disagreed. The one exception is the statement by Thomas Jefferson that he considered “the government of the United States as interdicted by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises,” post, at 562 (internal quotation marks omitted); but it is quite clear that Jefferson did not in fact espouse the broad principle of affirmative accommodation advocated by the dissent, see McConnell, 103 Harv. . 877 F. Supp.
While preventive rules are sometimes appropriate remedial measures, there must be a congruence between the means used and the ends to be achieved. Importance of Case:The Court struck down an attempt by Congress to provide sweeping protection for persons practicing their religions. The Court held that a generally applicable law (like a criminal drug law) does not need to be reviewed under a strict scrutiny analysis, even if it has an incidental impact on religious practice.
Thus, Madison wished to shift Mason’s language of “toleration” to the language of rights.
Levy, supra, at 200-201; Curry, supra, at 140— 141; Malbin, supra, at 23.
Congress had before it a long history of the discriminatory use of literacy tests to disfranchise voters on account of their race”) (opinion of Black, J. 1871) (“This amendment of the Constitution does not concentrate power in the general government for any purpose of police government within the States; its object is to preclude legislation by any State which shall `abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States’ “). But Baptists and Quakers, as well as others, opposed all government-compelled tithes on religious grounds. The District Court concluded that by enacting RFRA Congress exceeded the scope of its enforcement power under §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.
There must be a congruence and proportionality between the injury to be prevented or remedied and the means adopted to that end. CITY OF BOERNE v. FLORES, ARCHBISHOP OF SAN ANTONIO, et al.
This lack of support in the legislative record, however, is not RFRA’s most serious shortcoming. [2], RFRA had been crafted as a direct response to the Supreme Court's decision in Employment Division v. Smith,[3] when the Court had upheld, against a First Amendment challenge, an Oregon law criminalizing peyote use, which was used in Native American religious rituals. The Court provided two related rationales for its conclusion that §4(e) could “be viewed as a measure to secure for the Puerto Rican community residing in New York nondiscriminatory treatment by government.” Id., at 652. Id., at 334. It has been given the power "to enforce," not the power to determine what constitutes a constitutional violation.
Representative Bingham said the new draft would give Congress “the power .
He took the case against religious assessment to the people of Virginia in his now-famous “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments.” Levy, supra, at 201.