Employment Division v. Smith

Majority Opinion (Scalia, J.)

*874 Justice Scalia

delivered the opinion of the Court.

This case requires us to decide whether the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment permits the State of Oregon to include religiously inspired peyote use within the reach of its general criminal prohibition on use of that drug, and thus permits the State to deny unemployment benefits to persons dismissed from their jobs because of such religiously inspired use.

I

Oregon law prohibits the knowing or intentional possession of a “controlled substance” unless the substance has been prescribed by a medical practitioner. Ore. Rev. Stat. §475.992(4) (1987). The law defines “controlled substance” as a drug classified in Schedules I through V of the Federal Controlled Substances Act, 21 U. S. C. §§811-812, as modified by the State Board of Pharmacy. Ore. Rev. Stat. §475.005(6) (1987). Persons who violate this provision by possessing a controlled substance listed on Schedule I are “guilty of a Class B felony.” §475.992(4)(a). As compiled by the State Board of Pharmacy under its statutory authority, see §475.035, Schedule I contains the drug peyote, a hallucinogen derived from the plant Lophophora williamsii Lemaire. Ore. Admin. Rule 855-80-021(3)(s) (1988).

Respondents Alfred Smith and Galen Black (hereinafter respondents) were fired from their jobs with a private drug rehabilitation organization because they ingested peyote for sacramental purposes at a ceremony of the Native American Church, of which both are members. When respondents applied to petitioner Employment Division (hereinafter petitioner) for unemployment compensation, they were determined to be ineligible for benefits because they had been discharged for work-related “misconduct.” The Oregon Court of Appeals reversed that determination, holding that the denial of benefits violated respondents’ free exercise rights under the First Amendment,

*875 On appeal to the Oregon Supreme Court, petitioner argued that the denial of benefits was permissible because respondents’ consumption of peyote was a crime under Oregon law. The Oregon Supreme Court reasoned, however, that the criminality of respondents’ peyote use was irrelevant to resolution of their constitutional claim — since the purpose of the “misconduct” provision under which respondents had been disqualified was not to enforce the State’s criminal laws but to preserve the financial integrity of the compensation fund, and since that purpose was inadequate to justify the burden that disqualification imposed on respondents’ religious practice. Citing our decisions in Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398 (1963), and Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., 450 U. S. 707 (1981), the court concluded that respondents were entitled to payment of unemployment benefits. Smith v. Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources, 301 Ore. 209, 217-219, 721 P. 2d 445, 449-450 (1986). We granted certiorari. 480 U. S. 916 (1987).

Before this Court in 1987, petitioner continued to maintain that the illegality of respondents’ peyote consumption was relevant to their constitutional claim. We agreed, concluding that “if a State has prohibited through its criminal laws certain kinds of religiously motivated conduct without violating the First Amendment, it certainly follows that it may impose the lesser burden of denying unemployment compensation benefits to persons who engage in that conduct.” Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 485 U. S. 660, 670 (1988) (Smith I). We noted, however, that the Oregon Supreme Court had not decided whether respondents’ sacramental use of peyote was in fact proscribed by Oregon’s controlled substance law, and that this issue was a matter of dispute between the parties. Being “uncertain about the legality of the religious use of peyote in Oregon,” we determined that it would not be “appropriate for us to decide whether the practice is protected by the Federal Constitution.” Id., at 673. Accordingly, we *876 vacated the judgment of the Oregon Supreme Court and remanded for further proceedings. Id., at 674.

On remand, the Oregon Supreme Court held that respondents’ religiously inspired use of peyote fell within the prohibition of the Oregon statute, which “makes no exception for the sacramental use” of the drug. 307 Ore. 68, 72-73, 763 P. 2d 146, 148 (1988). It then considered whether that prohibition was valid under the Free Exercise Clause, and concluded that it was not. The court therefore reaffirmed its previous ruling that the State could not deny unemployment benefits to respondents for having engaged in that practice.

We again granted certiorari. 489 U. S. 1077 (1989).

II

Respondents’ claim for relief rests on our decisions in Sherbert v. Verner, supra, Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., supra, and Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Comm’n of Florida, 480 U. S. 136 (1987), in which we held that a State could not condition the availability of unemployment insurance on an individual’s willingness to forgo conduct required by his religion. As we observed in Smith I, however, the conduct at issue in those cases was not prohibited by law. We held that distinction to be critical, for “if Oregon does prohibit the religious use of peyote, and if that prohibition is consistent with the Federal Constitution, there is no federal right to engage in that conduct in Oregon,” and “the State is free to withhold unemployment compensation from respondents for engaging in work-related misconduct, despite its religious motivation.” 485 U. S., at 672. Now that the Oregon Supreme Court has confirmed that Oregon does prohibit the religious use of peyote, we proceed to consider whether that prohibition is permissible under the Free Exercise Clause.

A

The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, which has been made applicable to the States by incorporation into *877 the Fourteenth Amendment, see Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 303 (1940), provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. ...” U. S. Const., Arndt. 1 (emphasis added). The free exercise of religion means, first and foremost, the right to believe and profess whatever religious doctrine one desires. Thus, the First Amendment obviously excludes all “governmental regulation of religious beliefs as such.” Sherbert v. Verner, supra, at 402. The government may not compel affirmation of religious belief, see Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U. S. 488 (1961), punish the expression of religious doctrines it believes to be false, United States v. Ballard, 322 U. S. 78, 86-88 (1944), impose special disabilities on the basis of religious views or religious status, see McDaniel v. Paty, 435 U. S. 618 (1978); Fowler v. Rhode Island, 345 U. S. 67, 69 (1953); cf. Larson v. Valente, 456 U. S. 228, 245 (1982), or lend its power to one or the other side in controversies over religious authority or dogma, see Presbyterian Church in U. S. v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church, 393 U. S. 440, 445-452 (1969); Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 344 U. S. 94, 95-119 (1952); Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich, 426 U. S. 696, 708-725 (1976).

But the “exercise of religion” often involves not only belief and profession but the performance of (or abstention from) physical acts: assembling with others for a worship service, participating in sacramental use of bread and wine, proselytizing, abstaining from certain foods or certain modes of transportation. It would be true, we think (though no case of ours has involved the point), that a State would be “prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]” if it sought to ban such acts or abstentions only when they are engaged in for religious reasons, or only because of the religious belief that they display. It would doubtless be unconstitutional, for example, to ban the casting of “statues that are to be used *878 for worship purposes,” or to prohibit bowing down before a golden calf.

Respondents in the present case, however, seek to carry the meaning of “prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]” one large step further. They contend that their religious motivation for using peyote places them beyond the reach of a criminal law that is not specifically directed at their religious practice, and that is concededly constitutional as applied to those who use the drug for other reasons. They assert, in other words, that “prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]” includes requiring any individual to observe a generally applicable law that requires (or forbids) the performance of an act that his religious belief forbids (or requires). As a textual matter, we do not think the words must be given that meaning. It is no more necessary to regard the collection of a general tax, for example, as “prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]” by those citizens who believe support of organized government to be sinful, than it is to regard the same tax as “abridging the freedom ... of the press” of those publishing companies that must pay the tax as a condition of staying in business. It is a permissible reading of the text, in the one case as in the other, to say that if prohibiting the exercise of religion (or burdening the activity of printing) is not the object of the tax but merely the incidental effect of a generally applicable and otherwise valid provision, the First Amendment has not been offended. Compare Citizen Publishing Co. v. United States, 394 U. S. 131, 139 (1969) (upholding application of antitrust laws to press), with Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U. S. 233, 250-251 (1936) (striking down license tax applied only to newspapers with weekly circulation above a specified level); see generally Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Comm’r of Revenue, 460 U. S. 575, 581 (1983).

Our decisions reveal that the latter reading is the correct one. We have never held that an individual’s religious beliefs *879 excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law prohibiting conduct that the State is free to regulate. On the contrary, the record of more than a century of our free exercise jurisprudence contradicts that proposition. As described succinctly by Justice Frankfurter in Minersville School Dist. Bd. of Ed. v. Gobitis, 310 U. S. 586, 594-595 (1940): “Conscientious scruples have not, in the course of the long struggle for religious toleration, relieved the individual from obedience to a general law not aimed at the promotion or restriction of religious beliefs. The mere possession of religious convictions which contradict the relevant concerns of a political society does not relieve the citizen from the discharge of political responsibilities (footnote omitted).” We first had occasion to assert that principle in Reynolds v. United States, 98 U. S. 145 (1879), where we rejected the claim that criminal laws against polygamy could not be constitutionally applied to those whose religion commanded the practice. “Laws,” we said, “are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. . . . Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief? To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and in effect to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself.” Id., at 166-167.

Subsequent decisions have consistently held that the right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a “valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes).” United States v. Lee, 455 U. S. 252, 263, n. 3 (1982) (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment); see Minersville School Dist. Bd. of Ed. v. Gobitis, supra, at 595 (collecting cases). In Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U. S. 158 (1944), we held that a mother could be prosecuted under the child labor laws *880 for using her children to dispense literature in the streets, her religious motivation notwithstanding. We found no constitutional infirmity in “excluding [these children] from doing there what no other children may do.” Id., at 171. In Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U. S. 599 (1961) (plurality opinion), we upheld Sunday-closing laws against the claim that they burdened the religious practices of persons whose religions compelled them to refrain from work on other days. In Gillette v. United States, 401 U. S. 437, 461 (1971), we sustained the military Selective Service System against the claim that it violated free exercise by conscripting persons who opposed a particular war on religious grounds.

Our most recent decision involving a neutral, generally applicable regulatory law that compelled activity forbidden by an individual’s religion was United States v. Lee, 455 U. S., at 258-261. There, an Amish employer, on behalf of himself and his employees, sought exemption from collection and payment of Social Security taxes on the ground that the Amish faith prohibited participation in governmental support programs. We rejected the claim that an exemption was constitutionally required. There would be no way, we observed, to distinguish the Amish believer’s objection to Social Security taxes from the religious objections that others might have to the collection or use of other taxes. - “If, for example, a religious adherent believes war is a sin, and if a certain percentage of the federal budget can be identified as devoted to war-related activities, such individuals would have a similarly valid claim to be exempt from paying that percentage of the income tax. The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge the tax system because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief.” Id., at 260. Cf. Hernandez v. Commissioner, 490 U. S. 680 (1989) (rejecting free exercise challenge to payment of income taxes alleged to make religious activities more difficult).

*881 The only decisions in which we have held that the First Amendment bars application of a neutral, generally applicable law to religiously motivated action have involved not the Free Exercise Clause alone, but the Free Exercise Clause in conjunction with other constitutional protections, such as freedom of speech and of the press, see Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S., at 304-307 (invalidating a licensing system for religious and charitable solicitations under which the administrator had discretion to deny a license to any cause he deemed nonreligious); Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105 (1943) (invalidating a flat tax on solicitation as applied to the dissemination of religious ideas); Follett v. McCormick, 321 U. S. 573 (1944) (same), or the right of parents, acknowledged in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U. S. 510 (1925), to direct the education of their children, see Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205 (1972) (invalidating compulsory school-attendance laws as applied to Amish parents who refused on religious grounds to send their children to school).¹ *882 Some of our cases prohibiting compelled expression, decided exclusively upon free speech grounds, have also involved freedom of religion, cf. Wooley v. Maynard, 430 U. S. 705 (1977) (invalidating compelled display of a license plate slogan that offended individual religious beliefs); West Virginia Bd. of Education v. Barnette, 319 U. S. 624 (1943) (invalidating compulsory flag salute statute challenged by religious objectors). And it is easy to envision a case in which a challenge on freedom of association grounds would likewise be reinforced by Free Exercise Clause concerns. Cf. Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U. S. 609, 622 (1984) (“An individual’s freedom to speak, to worship, and to petition the government for the redress of grievances could not be vigorously protected from interference by the State [if] a correlative freedom to engage in group effort toward those ends were not also guaranteed”).1See Hernandez v. Commissioner, 490 U. S. 680, 699 (1989) (“The free exercise inquiry asks whether government has placed a substantial burden on the observation of a central religious belief or practice and, if so, whether a compelling governmental interest justifies the burden”); Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Comm’n of Fla., 480 U. S. 136, 141 (1987) (state laws burdening religions “must be subjected to strict scrutiny and could be justified only by proof by the State of a compelling interest”); Bowen v. Roy, 476 U. S. 693, 732 (1986) (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“Our precedents have long required the Government to show that a compelling state interest is served by its refusal to grant a religious exemption”); United States v. Lee, 455 U. S. 252, 257-258 *908 (1982) (“The state may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing that it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest”); Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., 450 U. S. 707, 718 (1981) (“The state may justify an inroad on religious liberty by showing that it is the least restrictive means of achieving some compelling state interest”); Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205, 215 (1972) (“[0]nly those interests of the highest order and those not otherwise served can overbalance legitimate claims to the free exercise of religion”); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398, 406 (1963) (question is “whether some compelling state interest... justifies the substantial infringement of appellant’s First Amendment right”).

The present case does not present such a hybrid situation, but a free exercise claim unconnected with any communicative activity or parental right. Respondents urge us to hold, quite simply, that when otherwise prohibitable conduct is accompanied by religious convictions, not only the convictions but the conduct itself must be free from governmental regulation. We have never held that, and decline to do so now. There being no contention that Oregon’s drug law represents an attempt to regulate religious beliefs, the communication of religious beliefs, or the raising of one’s children in those beliefs, the rule to which we have adhered ever since Reynolds plainly controls. “Our cases do not at their farthest reach support the proposition that a stance of conscientious opposition relieves an objector from any colliding duty fixed by a democratic government.” Gillette v. United States, supra, at 461.

B

Respondents argue that even though exemption from generally applicable criminal laws need not automatically be extended to religiously motivated actors, at least the claim for a *883 religious exemption must be evaluated under the balancing test set forth in Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398 (1963). Under the Sherbert test, governmental actions that substantially burden a religious practice must be justified by a compelling governmental interest. See id., at 402-403; see also Hernandez v. Commissioner, 490 U. S., at 699. Applying that test we have, on three occasions, invalidated state unemployment compensation rules that conditioned the availability of benefits upon an applicant’s willingness to work under conditions forbidden by his religion. See Sherbert v. Verner, supra; Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., 450 U. S. 707 (1981); Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Comm’n of Florida, 480 U. S. 136 (1987). We have never invalidated any governmental action on the basis of the Sherbert test except the denial of unemployment compensation. Although we have sometimes purported to apply the Sherbert test in contexts other than that, we have always found the test satisfied, see United States v. Lee, 455 U. S. 252 (1982); Gillette v. United States, 401 U. S. 437 (1971). In recent years we have abstained from applying the Sherbert test (outside the unemployment compensation field) at all. In Bowen v. Roy, 476 U. S. 693 (1986), we declined to apply Sherbert analysis to a federal statutory scheme that required benefit applicants and recipients to provide them Social Security numbers. The plaintiffs in that case asserted that it would violate their religious beliefs to obtain and provide a Social Security number for their daughter. We held the statute’s application to the plaintiffs valid regardless of whether it was necessary to effectuate a compelling interest. See 476 U. S., at 699-701. In Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Assn., 485 U. S. 439 (1988), we declined to apply Sherbert analysis to the Government’s logging and road construction activities on lands used for religious purposes by several Native American Tribes, even though it was undisputed that the activities “could have devastating effects on traditional Indian religious practices,” 485 U. S., at 451. *884 In Goldman v. Weinberger, 475 U. S. 503 (1986), we rejected application of the Sherbert test to military dress regulations that forbade the wearing of yarmulkes. In O'Lone v. Estate of Shabazz, 482 U. S. 342 (1987), we sustained, without mentioning the Sherbert test, a, prison’s refusal to excuse inmates from work requirements to attend worship services.

Even if we were inclined to breathe into Sherbert some life beyond the unemployment compensation field, we would not apply it to require exemptions from a generally applicable criminal law. The Sherbert test, it must be recalled, was developed in a context that lent itself to individualized governmental assessment of the reasons for the relevant conduct. As a plurality of the Court noted in Roy, a distinctive feature of unemployment compensation programs is that their eligibility criteria invite consideration of the particular circumstances behind an applicant’s unemployment: “The statutory conditions [in Sherbert and Thomas] provided that a person was not eligible for unemployment compensation benefits if, ‘without good cause,’ he had quit work’ or refused available work. The ‘good cause’ standard created a mechanism for individualized exemptions.” Bowen v. Roy, supra, at 708 (opinion of Burger, C. J., joined by Powell and Rehnquist, JJ.). See also Sherbert, supra, at 401, n. 4 (reading state unemployment compensation law as allowing benefits for unemployment caused by at least some “personal reasons”). As the plurality pointed out in Roy, our decisions in the unemployment cases stand for the proposition that where the State has in place a system of individual exemptions, it may not refuse to extend that system to cases of “religious hardship” without compelling reason. Bowen v. Roy, supra, at 708.

Whether or not the decisions are that limited, they at least have nothing to do with an across-the-board criminal prohibition on a particular form of conduct. Although, as noted earlier, we have sometimes used the Sherbert test to analyze free exercise challenges to such laws, see United States v. *885 Lee, supra, at 257-260; Gillette v. United States, supra, at 462, we have never applied the test to invalidate one. We conclude today that the sounder approach, and the approach in accord with the vast majority of our precedents, is to hold the test inapplicable to such challenges. The government’s ability to enforce generally applicable prohibitions of socially harmful conduct, like its ability to carry out other aspects of public policy, “cannot depend on measuring the effects of a governmental action on a religious objector’s spiritual development.” Lyng, supra, at 451. To make an individual’s obligation to obey such a law contingent upon the law’s coincidence with his religious beliefs, except where the State’s interest is “compelling” — permitting him, by virtue of his beliefs, “to become a law unto himself,” Reynolds v. United States, 98 U. S., at 167 — contradicts both constitutional tradition and common sense.²2I reluctantly agree that, in light of this Court’s decision in Employment Division, Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 485 U. S. 660 (1988), the question on which certiorari was granted is properly presented in this case. I have grave doubts, however, as to the wisdom or propriety of deciding the constitutionality of a criminal prohibition which the State has not sought to enforce, which the State did not rely on in defending its denial of unemployment benefits before the state courts, and which the Oregon courts could, on remand, either invalidate on state constitutional grounds, or conclude that it remains irrelevant to Oregon’s interest in administering its unemployment benefits program. It is surprising, to say the least, that this Court which so often prides itself about principles of judicial restraint and reduction of federal control over matters of state law would stretch its jurisdiction to the limit in order to reach, in this abstract setting, the constitutionality of Oregon’s criminal prohibition of peyote use.

The “compelling government interest” requirement seems benign, because it is familiar from other fields. But using it as the standard that must be met before the government may accord different treatment on the basis of race, see, e. g., *886 Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U. S. 429, 432 (1984), or before the government may regulate the content of speech, see, e. g., Sable Communications of California v. FCC, 492 U. S. 115, 126 (1989), is not remotely comparable to using it for the purpose asserted here. What it produces in those other fields — equality of treatment and an unrestricted flow of contending speech — are constitutional norms; what it would produce here — a private right to ignore generally applicable laws — is a constitutional anomaly.³3The only reported case in which the State of Oregon has sought to prosecute a person for religious peyote use is State v. Soto, 21 Ore. App. 794, 537 P. 2d 142 (1975), cert. denied, 424 U. S. 955 (1976).

Nor is it possible to limit the impact of respondents’ proposal by requiring a “compelling state interest” only when the conduct prohibited is “central” to the individual’s religion. Cf. Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Protective Assn., 485 U. S., at 474-476 (BRENNAN, J., dissenting). It is no *887 more appropriate for judges to determine the “centrality” of religious beliefs before applying a “compelling interest” test in the free exercise field, than it would be for them to determine the “importance” of ideas before applying the “compelling interest” test in the free speech field. What principle of law or logic can be brought to bear to contradict a believer’s assertion that a particular act is “central” to his personal faith? Judging the centrality of different religious practices is akin to the unacceptable “business of evaluating the relative merits of differing religious claims.” United States v. Lee, 455 U. S., at 263 n. 2 (Stevens, J., concurring). As we reaffirmed only last Term, “[i]t is not within the judicial ken to question the centrality of particular beliefs or practices to a faith, or the validity of particular litigants’ interpretations of those creeds.” Hernandez v. Commissioner, 490 U. S., at 699. Repeatedly and in many different contexts, we have warned that courts must not presume to determine the place of a particular belief in a religion or the plausibility of a religious claim. See, e. g., Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., 450 U. S., at 716; Presbyterian Church in U. S. v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church, 393 U. S., at 450; Jones v. Wolf, 443 U. S. 595, 602-606 (1979); United States v. Ballard, 322 U. S. 78, 85-87 (1944).⁴4This dearth of evidence is not surprising, since the State never asserted this health and safety interest before the Oregon courts; thus, there was no opportunity for factfinding concerning the alleged dangers of peyote use. What has now become the State’s principal argument for its view that the criminal prohibition is enforceable against religious use of peyote rests on no evidentiary foundation at all.

*888 If the “compelling interest” test is to be applied at all, then, it must be applied across the board, to all actions thought to be religiously commanded. Moreover, if “compelling interest” really means what it says (and watering it down here would subvert its rigor in the other fields where it is applied), many laws will not meet the test. Any society adopting such a system would be courting anarchy, but that danger increases in direct proportion to the society’s diversity of religious beliefs, and its determination to coerce or suppress none of them. Precisely because “we are a cosmopolitan nation made up of people of almost every conceivable religious preference,” Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U. S., at 606, and precisely because we value and protect that religious divergence, we cannot afford the luxury of deeming presumptively invalid, as applied to the religious objector, every regulation of conduct that does not protect an interest of the highest order. The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind — ranging from *889 compulsory military service, see, e. g., Gillette v. United States, 401 U. S. 437 (1971), to the payment of taxes, see, e. g., United States v. Lee, supra; to health and safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, see, e. g., Funkhouser v. State, 763 P. 2d 695 (Okla. Crim. App. 1988), compulsory vaccination laws, see, e. g., Cude v. State, 237 Ark. 927, 377 S. W. 2d 816 (1964), drug laws, see, e. g., Olsen v. Drug Enforcement Administration, 279 U. S. App. D. C. 1, 878 F. 2d 1458 (1989), and traffic laws, see Cox v. New Hampshire, 312 U. S. 569 (1941); to social welfare legislation such as minimum wage laws, see Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation v. Secretary of Labor, 471 U. S. 290 (1985), child labor laws, see Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U. S. 158 (1944), animal cruelty laws, see, e. g., Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 723 F. Supp. 1467 (SD Fla. 1989), cf. State v. Massey, 229 N. C. 734, 51 S. E. 2d 179, appeal dism’d, 336 U. S. 942 (1949), environmental protection laws, see United States v. Little, 638 F. Supp. 337 (Mont. 1986), and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the races, see, e. g., Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U. S. 574, 603-604 (1983). The First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty does not require this.⁵5See 21 CFR § 1307.31 (1989) (“The listing of peyote as a controlled substance in Schedule I does not apply to the nondrug use of peyote in bona fide religious ceremonies of the Native American Church, and members of the Native American Church so using peyote are exempt from registration. Any person who manufactures peyote for or distributes peyote to the Native American Church, however, is required to obtain registration annually and to comply with all other requirements of law”); see Olsen v. Drug Enforcement Admin., 279 U. S. App. D. C. 1, 6-7, 878 F. 2d 1458, 1463-1464 (1989) (explaining DEA’s rationale for the exception). Moreover, 23 States, including many that have significant Native American populations, have statutory or judicially crafted exemptions in their drug laws for religious use of peyote. See 307 Ore. 68, 73, n. 2, 763 P. 2d 146, 148, n. 2 (1988) (case below). Although this does not prove that Oregon *913 must have such an exception too, it is significant that these States, and the Federal Government, all find their (presumably compelling) interests in controlling the use of dangerous drugs compatible with an exemption for religious use of peyote. Cf. Boos v. Barry, 485 U. S. 312, 329 (1988) (finding that an ordinance restricting picketing near a foreign embassy was not the least restrictive means of serving the asserted government interest; existence of an analogous, but more narrowly drawn, federal statute showed that “a less restrictive alternative is readily available”).

*890 Values that are protected against government interference through enshrinement in the Bill of Rights are not thereby banished from the political process. Just as a society that believes in the negative protection accorded to the press by the First Amendment is likely to enact laws that affirmatively foster the dissemination of the printed word, so also a society that believes in the negative protection accorded to religious belief can be expected to be solicitous of that value in its legislation as well. It is therefore not surprising that a number of States have made an exception to their drug laws for sacramental peyote use. See, e. g., Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. §§ 13 — 3402(B)(1)—(3) (1989); Colo. Rev. Stat. § 12-22-317(3) (1985); N. M. Stat. Ann. §30-31-6(D) (Supp. 1989). But to say that a nondiscriminatory religious-practice exemption is permitted, or even that it is desirable, is not to say that it is constitutionally required, and that the appropriate occasions for its creation can be discerned by the courts. It may fairly be said that leaving accommodation to the political process will place at a relative disadvantage those religious practices that are not widely engaged in; but that unavoidable consequence of democratic government must be preferred to a system in which each conscience is a law unto itself or in which judges weigh the social importance of all laws against the centrality of all religious beliefs.

Because respondents’ ingestion of peyote was prohibited under Oregon law, and because that prohibition is constitutional, Oregon may, consistent with the Free Exercise Clause, deny respondents unemployment compensation when their dismissal results from use of the drug. The decision of the Oregon Supreme Court is accordingly reversed.

It is so ordered.

_[

*891 Justice O'Connor filed a separate opinion concurring in the judgment.

She agreed the state could deny unemployment benefits but rejected the majority's abandonment of the compelling-interest balancing test for free-exercise *897 claims, arguing the Court should have reached the same result by weighing Oregon's interest against the burden on peyote-using church members and finding the state's interest sufficient. That opinion, joined in part by Justices Brennan, Marshall, and

Blackmun, is omitted here.]_

Dissenting Opinion (Blackmun, J., joined by Brennan and Marshall, JJ.)

Justice Blackmun,

with whom Justice Brennan and Justice Marshall join, dissenting.

This Court over the years painstakingly has developed a consistent and exacting standard to test the constitutionality of a state statute that burdens the free exercise of religion. Such a statute may stand only if the law in general, and the State’s refusal to allow a religious exemption in particular, are justified by a compelling interest that cannot be served by less restrictive means.¹1See Hernandez v. Commissioner, 490 U. S. 680, 699 (1989) (“The free exercise inquiry asks whether government has placed a substantial burden on the observation of a central religious belief or practice and, if so, whether a compelling governmental interest justifies the burden”); Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Comm’n of Fla., 480 U. S. 136, 141 (1987) (state laws burdening religions “must be subjected to strict scrutiny and could be justified only by proof by the State of a compelling interest”); Bowen v. Roy, 476 U. S. 693, 732 (1986) (O’Connor, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“Our precedents have long required the Government to show that a compelling state interest is served by its refusal to grant a religious exemption”); United States v. Lee, 455 U. S. 252, 257-258 *908 (1982) (“The state may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing that it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest”); Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., 450 U. S. 707, 718 (1981) (“The state may justify an inroad on religious liberty by showing that it is the least restrictive means of achieving some compelling state interest”); Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205, 215 (1972) (“[0]nly those interests of the highest order and those not otherwise served can overbalance legitimate claims to the free exercise of religion”); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U. S. 398, 406 (1963) (question is “whether some compelling state interest... justifies the substantial infringement of appellant’s First Amendment right”).

*908 Until today, I thought this was a settled and inviolate principle of this Court’s First Amendment jurisprudence. The majority, however, perfunctorily dismisses it as a “constitutional anomaly.” Ante, at 886. As carefully detailed in Justice O’Connor’s concurring opinion, ante, p. 891, the majority is able to arrive at this view only by mischaracterizing this Court’s precedents. The Court discards leading free exercise cases such as Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296 (1940), and Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205 (1972), as “hybrid.” Ante, at 882. The Court views traditional free exercise analysis as somehow inapplicable to criminal prohibitions (as opposed to conditions on the receipt of benefits), and to state laws of general applicability (as opposed, presumably, to laws that expressly single out religious practices). Ante, at 884-885. The Court cites cases in which, due to various exceptional circumstances, we found strict scrutiny inapposite, to hint that the Court has repudiated that standard altogether. Ante, at 882-884. In short, it effectuates a wholesale overturning of settled law concerning the Religion Clauses of our Constitution. One hopes that the Court is aware of the consequences, and that its result is not a product of overreaction to the serious problems the country’s drug crisis has generated.

This distorted view of our precedents leads the majority to conclude that strict scrutiny of a state law burdening the free exercise of religion is a “luxury” that a well-ordered society *909 cannot afford, ante, at 888, and that the repression of minority religions is an “unavoidable consequence of democratic government.” Ante, at 890. I do not believe the Founders thought their dearly bought freedom from religious persecution a “luxury,” but an essential element of liberty — and they could not have thought religious intolerance “unavoidable,” for they drafted the Religion Clauses precisely in order to avoid that intolerance.

For these reasons, I agree with Justice O’Connor’s analysis of the applicable free exercise doctrine, and I join parts I and II of her opinion.² As she points out, “the critical question in this case is whether exempting respondents from the State’s general criminal prohibition ‘will unduly interfere with fulfillment of the governmental interest.’” Ante, at 905, quoting United States v. Lee, 455 U. S. 252, 259 (1982). I do disagree, however, with her specific answer to that question.2I reluctantly agree that, in light of this Court’s decision in Employment Division, Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 485 U. S. 660 (1988), the question on which certiorari was granted is properly presented in this case. I have grave doubts, however, as to the wisdom or propriety of deciding the constitutionality of a criminal prohibition which the State has not sought to enforce, which the State did not rely on in defending its denial of unemployment benefits before the state courts, and which the Oregon courts could, on remand, either invalidate on state constitutional grounds, or conclude that it remains irrelevant to Oregon’s interest in administering its unemployment benefits program. It is surprising, to say the least, that this Court which so often prides itself about principles of judicial restraint and reduction of federal control over matters of state law would stretch its jurisdiction to the limit in order to reach, in this abstract setting, the constitutionality of Oregon’s criminal prohibition of peyote use.

_[

Blackmun's dissent

goes on to argue, over several pages, that the Court owed the case the compelling-interest scrutiny of Sherbert v. Verner and Wisconsin v. Yoder, and that Oregon's asserted interest was merely symbolic since the state had never prosecuted respondents or other religious peyote users. The dissent then turns to the state's claimed health and safety interest:]_

The State proclaims an interest in protecting the health and safety of its citizens from the dangers of unlawful drugs. It offers, however, no evidence that the religious use of peyote *912 has ever harmed anyone.⁴ The factual findings of other courts cast doubt on the State’s assumption that religious use of peyote is harmful. See State v. Whittingham, 19 Ariz. App. 27, 30, 504 P. 2d 950, 953 (1973) (“[T]he State failed to prove that the quantities of peyote used in the sacraments of the Native American Church are sufficiently harmful to the health and welfare of the participants so as to permit a legitimate intrusion under the State’s police power”); People v. Woody, 61 Cal. 2d 716, 722-723, 394 P. 2d 813, 818 (1964) (“[A]s the Attorney General . . . admits, . . . the opinion of scientists and other experts is ‘that peyote . . . works no permanent deleterious injury to the Indian’ ”).4This dearth of evidence is not surprising, since the State never asserted this health and safety interest before the Oregon courts; thus, there was no opportunity for factfinding concerning the alleged dangers of peyote use. What has now become the State’s principal argument for its view that the criminal prohibition is enforceable against religious use of peyote rests on no evidentiary foundation at all.

The fact that peyote is classified as a Schedule I controlled substance does not, by itself, show that any and all uses of peyote, in any circumstance, are inherently harmful and dangerous. The Federal Government, which created the classifications of unlawful drugs from which Oregon’s drug laws are derived, apparently does not find peyote so dangerous as to preclude an exemption for religious use.⁵ Moreover, *913 other Schedule I drugs have lawful uses. See Olsen v. Drug Enforcement Admin., 279 U. S. App. D. C. 1, 6, n. 4, 878 F. 2d 1458, 1463, n. 4 (medical and research uses of marijuana).5See 21 CFR § 1307.31 (1989) (“The listing of peyote as a controlled substance in Schedule I does not apply to the nondrug use of peyote in bona fide religious ceremonies of the Native American Church, and members of the Native American Church so using peyote are exempt from registration. Any person who manufactures peyote for or distributes peyote to the Native American Church, however, is required to obtain registration annually and to comply with all other requirements of law”); see Olsen v. Drug Enforcement Admin., 279 U. S. App. D. C. 1, 6-7, 878 F. 2d 1458, 1463-1464 (1989) (explaining DEA’s rationale for the exception). Moreover, 23 States, including many that have significant Native American populations, have statutory or judicially crafted exemptions in their drug laws for religious use of peyote. See 307 Ore. 68, 73, n. 2, 763 P. 2d 146, 148, n. 2 (1988) (case below). Although this does not prove that Oregon *913 must have such an exception too, it is significant that these States, and the Federal Government, all find their (presumably compelling) interests in controlling the use of dangerous drugs compatible with an exemption for religious use of peyote. Cf. Boos v. Barry, 485 U. S. 312, 329 (1988) (finding that an ordinance restricting picketing near a foreign embassy was not the least restrictive means of serving the asserted government interest; existence of an analogous, but more narrowly drawn, federal statute showed that “a less restrictive alternative is readily available”).

The carefully circumscribed ritual context in which respondents used peyote is far removed from the irresponsible and unrestricted recreational use of unlawful drugs.⁶ The Native American Church’s internal restrictions on, and supervision of, its members’ use of peyote substantially obviate the State’s health and safety concerns. See id., at 10, 878 F. 2d, at 1467 (“‘The Administrator [of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)] finds that . . . the Native American Church’s use of peyote is isolated to specific ceremonial occasions,”’ and so “‘an accommodation can be made for a religious organization which uses peyote in circumscribed ceremonies’” (quoting DEA Final Order)); id., at 7, 878 F. 2d, at 1464 (“[F]or members of the Native American Church, use of peyote outside the ritual is sacrilegious”); Woody, 61 Cal. 2d, at 721, 394 P. 2d, at 817 (“[T]o use peyote for nonreligious purposes is sacrilegious”); R. Julien, A Primer of Drug Action 148 (3d ed. 1981) (“[P]eyote is seldom abused by members of the Native American *914 Church”); Slotkin, The Peyote Way, in Teachings from the American Earth 96, 104 (D. Tedlock & B. Tedlock eds. 1975) (“[T]he Native American Church . . . refuses to permit the presence of curiosity seekers at its rites, and vigorously opposes the sale or use of Peyote for non-sacramental purposes”); Bergman, Navajo Peyote Use: Its Apparent Safety, 128 Am. J. Psychiatry 695 (1971) (Bergman).⁷6In this respect, respondents’ use of peyote seems closely analogous to the sacramental use of wine by the Roman Catholic Church. During Prohibition, the Federal Government exempted such use of wine from its general ban on possession and use of alcohol. See National Prohibition Act, Title II, § 3, 41 Stat. 308. However compelling the Government’s then general interest in prohibiting the use of alcohol may have been, it could not plausibly have asserted an interest sufficiently compelling to outweigh Catholics’ right to take communion.7The use of peyote is, to some degree, self-limiting. The peyote plant is extremely bitter, and eating it is an unpleasant experience, which would tend to discourage casual or recreational use. See State v. Whittingham, 19 Ariz. App. 27, 30, 504 P. 2d 950, 953 (1973) (“ ‘[PJeyote can cause vomiting by reason of its bitter taste’”); E. Anderson, Peyote: The Divine Cactus 161 (1980) (“[T]he eating of peyote usually is a difficult ordeal in that nausea and other unpleasant physical manifestations occur regularly. Repeated use is likely, therefore, only if one is a serious researcher or is devoutly involved in taking peyote as part of a religious ceremony”); Slotkin, The Peyote Way, in Teachings from the American Earth 96, 98 (D. Tedlock & B. Tedlock eds. 1975) (“[M]any find it bitter, inducing indigestion or nausea").

_[

The dissent goes on to analogize the case to Yoder, and to review the free-exercise claims other courts have granted or denied to other religious groups using controlled substances, before concluding:]_

For these reasons, I conclude that Oregon’s interest in enforcing its drug laws against religious use of peyote is not sufficiently compelling to outweigh respondents’ right to the free exercise of their religion. Since the State could not constitutionally enforce its criminal prohibition against respondents, the interests underlying the State’s drug laws cannot justify its denial of unemployment benefits. Absent such justification, the State’s regulatory interest in denying benefits for religiously motivated “misconduct,” see ante, at 874, is indistinguishable from the state interests this Court has rejected in Frazee, Hobbie, Thomas, and Sherbert. The State of Oregon cannot, consistently with the Free Exercise Clause, deny respondents unemployment benefits.

I dissent.

[A footnote appended to the dissent's discussion of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act reads:]

Indeed, Oregon’s attitude toward respondents’ religious peyote use harkens back to the repressive federal policies pursued a century ago:

“In the government’s view, traditional practices were not only morally degrading, but unhealthy. ‘Indians are fond of gatherings of every description,’ a 1913 public health study complained, advocating the restriction of dances and ‘sings’ to stem contagious diseases. In 1921, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Charles Burke reminded his staff to punish any Indian engaged in ‘any dance which involves . . . the reckless giving away of property . . . frequent or prolonged periods of celebration ... in fact, any disorderly or plainly excessive performance that promotes superstitious cruelty, licentiousness, idleness, danger to health, and shiftless indifference to family welfare.’ Two years later, he forbid Indians under the age of 50 from participating in any dances of any kind, and directed federal employees ‘to educate public opinion’ against them.” Id., at 370-371 (footnotes omitted).