EMPLOYMENT DIVISION v. SMITH (1990)

Legal Principle at Issue

Whether the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment permits a state to deny unemployment benefits to workers who were fired for ingesting peyote during a religious ceremony.

Action

Reversed. Petitioning party received a favorable disposition.

Facts/Syllabus

Respondents Alfred Smith and Galen Black were fired by a private drug rehabilitation organization because they ingested peyote, a hallucinogenic drug, for sacramental purposes at a ceremony of their Native American Church. Their applications for unemployment compensation were denied by the state of Oregon under a state law disqualifying employees discharged for work-related "misconduct." 

Holding that the denials violated respondents' First Amendment free exercise rights, the State Court of Appeals reversed. The Supreme Court of Oregon affirmed in 1988, but the Supreme Court vacated the judgment and remanded for a determination whether sacramental peyote use is proscribed by the State's controlled substance law, which makes it a felony to knowingly or intentionally possess the drug. Pending that determination, the Supreme Court refused to decide whether such use is protected by the Constitution. 

On remand, the Supreme Court of Oregon held that sacramental peyote use violated, and was not excepted from, the state law prohibition, but concluded that that prohibition was invalid under the Free Exercise Clause.