Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of the State of Oregon, et al. v. Smith (485 U.S. 660)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided April 27, 1988 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 485 U.S. 660 · 108 S. Ct. 1444
- Decided
- April 27, 1988
- Term
- October Term 1987
- Vote
- 5–3
- Majority author
- Justice Stevens
- Issue area
- First Amendment
- Disposition
- Vacated and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Conservative
Opinion excerpt
Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court. Respondents are drug and alcohol abuse rehabilitation counselors who were discharged after they ingested peyote, a hallucinogenic drug, during a religious ceremony of the Native American Church. Both applied for and were denied unemployment compensation by petitioner Employment Division. The Oregon Supreme Court held that this denial, although proper as a matter of Oregon law, violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the Federal Constitution. In reaching that conclusion the state court attached no significance to the fact that the possession of peyote is a felony under Oregon law punishable by imprisonment for up to 10 years. Because we are persuaded that the alleged illegality of respondents’ conduct is relevant to the constitutional analysis, we granted certiorari, 480 U. S. 916 (1987), and now vacate the judgments and remand for further proceedings. I Respondents Alfred Smith and Galen Black were employed by the Douglas County Council on Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention and Treatment (ADAPT), a nonprofit corporation that provides treatment for alcohol and drug abusers. Both were qualified to be counselors, in part, because they had former drug and alcohol dependencies. As a matter of policy, ADAPT required its recovering counselors to abstain from the use of alcohol and illegal drugs. ADAPT terminated…
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