(host) All of us have individual rights and liberties. We want to enjoy political liberty to express our ideas. Economic liberty to pursue happiness in our jobs and careers. And religious liberty to be secure in our own beliefs. In his 1792 essay on property, James Madison asserted that we have a peculiar value in religious opinions, which was the most sacred of all property. This meant that our rights ensure not only our persons and possessions, but the free use of our faculties as well. In other words, having religious liberty means that we must be left free to believe what we want and to exercise or practice those beliefs.

(host 1) So how have we defined the free exercise of religious beliefs and what happens when this right collides with public interests? This is the story of the Free Exercise Clause.

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(Describer) A hand writes with a quill. A document reads "We the People". Words appear: Bill of Rights Institute.

The American founders took previous theoretical ideas in support of religious liberty that had been generally dismissed in Europe and the rest of the world, and applied them in a revolutionary new way. In the United States, religious liberty would be one of the most fundamental rights of an individual, with religious belief and practice viewed as matters of conscience no government or person could violate. The founders' thinking was shaped in part by the history of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries that had seen widespread religious wars, persecution, and intolerance.

(host 1) Out of those horrors, the Enlightenment introduced the idea of religious toleration, as governments allowed or permitted certain groups, though not all, to worship freely within certain parameters. This was certainly a step forward, but it was still not enough.

(Describer) Soldiers walk on a field.

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During the American Revolution and founding, the discussion of natural rights principles included the formal declaration that the ability to freely exercise religious beliefs was an inalienable right because an individual's conscience should be beyond the control of the government.

(host 1) And although the founders may have disagreed over the relationship between church and state, Americans concurred that religious free exercise was an inalienable right.

(host 2) In 1776, the Virginia Declaration of Rights was one of the first assertions of the idea stating, "Religion and the manner of discharging it, "can be directed only by reason and conviction, "not by force or violence, and therefore "all men are equally entitled to the free exercise "of religion, according to the dictates of conscience."

(host 1) A decade later, James Madison wrote his "Memorial and Remonstrance" stating, "The Religion then of every man "must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; "and it is the right of every man "to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right."

(host 2) President George Washington wrote a number of public letters to several different congregations, including Baptists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Quakers, Jewish groups, and others in support of religious liberty for all. As he stated in a letter to the United Baptist churches of Virginia, "I have often expressed "my sentiment that every man, conducting himself "as a good citizen and being accountable to God alone "for his religious opinions, ought to be protected "in worshiping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience." These ideas went into the making of the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause, which reads, "Congress shall make no law "respecting religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Over the decades, the Supreme Court has worked to define the Free Exercise Clause in several cases. In 1940, it incorporated the clause in Cantwell v Connecticut in which the court unanimously overturned a state law preventing Jehovah's Witnesses from freely sharing their religious beliefs door-to-door. The court laid down the principle that religious belief cannot be regulated, but some action or behavior could constitutionally be curtailed for the good of society.

(host 1) Then in the 1963 case of Sherbert v Verner, the court ruled that the South Carolina government could not deny unemployment benefits to a woman named Adeil Sherbert, who was fired for refusing to work on Saturday, an action that would have violated her religious beliefs. The court determined that the state's eligibility restrictions for who could collect unemployment violated the Free Exercise Clause, and that such a restriction on free exercise would need to serve a compelling government interest and be narrowly tailored.

(host 2) And nearly a decade later in the 1972 case, Wisconsin v Yoder, Amish children were exempted from compulsory attendance in high school because of their parents' religious beliefs.

(host 1) However, in the 1990 case of Employment Division v Smith, the court would cite a distinction between belief and actions in order to allow a state government to ban a man named Alfred Smith from collecting unemployment. Smith had been fired for the use of peyote, an illegal hallucinogenic drug, even though it was used as part of a ceremony with his religious sect, the Native American Church. The court decided that the general law's regulating drug use did not single out the religion in a discriminatory way. In recent years, the court has continued to affirm the importance of the free exercise of religion. In 2017's Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v Comer, the court overturned a law that prevented the government from funding the repair of a playground of a religious preschool. The majority ruled the Free Exercise Clause prevents states from interpreting their own constitutions in a way that discriminates against religious believers solely because they have a religious identity. Throughout the history of the United States, the ability to freely exercise your religious beliefs has been recognized as a fundamental inalienable right. When and how this right can be regulated continues to be discussed and debated to this day. What will the next case or public discussion that concerns this important right? This has been the story of the Free Exercise Clause. Accessibility provided by the U.S. Department of Education.

(Describer) Bill of Rights Institute.

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(Describer) Accessibility Provided by the US Department of Education.

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