United States v. Lee
Bill Long 7/30/05
455 US 252 (Decided February 23, 1982)
The Court held (9-0) that an Amish farmer/carpenter's Free Exercise claim failed when he refused, on First Amendment FE of religion grounds, to pay social security taxes for his workers and to deduct social security amounts from their paychecks. The Old Order Amish refuse to receive old age benefits from the federal social security system because they feel it is their religious duty to care for the members of their communiy. Therefore, they argued, the requirement that they pay into the fund is an unconstitutional burden on their FE of religion.
Though the framework used by the Court in arriving at its decision was close enough to that articulated in Sherbert and Thomas to conclude that no new test for FE cases was being developed by the Court, there was a paragraph in Justice Stevens' concurring opinion that, when combined with Rehnquist's dissent in Thomas, should have given the Brennan wing of the Court considerably unease regarding the stability of the Sherbert framework. To all of these points, now.
Brief Recitation of Facts
When Mr. Lee, an Old Order Amish carpenter/farmer failed to pay quarterly social security (SS) taxes to the government or deduct these taxes from his fellow Amish workers, the IRS assessed him more than $27,000 for these unpaid taxes. He paid a minimal amount and then sued the US for a refund, claiming that a federal tax statute as well as the 1st Amendment FE clause protected him from the payment of these taxes. The District Court held that the assessment statutes were unconstitutional as applied to Mr. Lee because another federal statue (26 USC 1402(g)) allowed Amish self-employed people to be exempt from paying SS taxes, and there was no reason why Amish employers and employees (and not simply self-employed individuals) should be assessed SS taxes while self-employed Amish should not.
The Supreme Court's Holding
Writing for the unanimous Court, Chief Justice Burger brushed aside the statutory argument and focused instead on the FE claim. Under the Court's precedents, the first point to analyze was whether the statute/government action burdened religion. It was not the province of the Court to ascertain how sincere the Amish belief was or whether complying with the IRS interpretation of law would in fact still be compatible with Amish belief. The Court simply concluded that "because the payment of the taxes or receipt of benefits violates Amish religious beliefs, compulsory participation in the social security system interferes with their free exercise rights."
The second part of the inquiry then is whether government has a compelling interest in seeing its law be enforced despite its burden on the FE of religion. It was this question that made both the SC and IN unemployment statutes infirm, in the Court's judgment, in Sherbert and Thomas. The government could show no interest stronger than a generic one not to have the unemployment fund depleted by fradulent claims--which didn't rise to a "compelling interest." In this case, CJ Burger uses slightly different wording to articulate the test: "The state may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing that it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest." After reviewing some of the benefits that the SS system provides, the court concluded that "the design of the system requires sypport by mandatory contributions from covered employers and employees." Government's interest in having this done is "very high."
The third "prong," which really had not been clearly developed in the Court's jurisprudence, was whether "accommodating the Amish belief will duly interfere with fulfillment of the governmental interest." The Court concluded that it would. If the Amish were able to "opt out" of the system other groups would likewise take advantage of this provision or other tax code provisions, leading to the weakening of the SS system and the American system of taxation generally. "To maintain an organized society that guarantees religious freedom to a great variety of faiths requries that some religious practices yield to the common good." Congress has already accommodated such beliefs to the extent possible by permitting self-employed people to exempt themselves from payment of SS taxes. The Constitution could not be stretched to allow further exemptions.
Stevens' Concurrence
Justice John Paul Stevens wanted to make clear that his reason for writing separately was to try to correct one aspect of the Court's use of the Sherbert test. That test gave the impression that once religion was burdened by government/state action, the state shouldered its own considerable burden to show that the limitation on individual FE was required by an overriding governmental interest. Stevens would reframe that.
"That formulation of the constitutional standard (burden on government) suggests that the Government always bears a heavy burden of justifying the application of neutral general laws to individual conscientious objectors. In my opinion, it is the objector who must shoulder the burden of demonstrating that there is a unique reason for allowing him a special exemption from a valid law of general applicability."
Conclusion
Stevens' language of neutral laws and the burden on the individual to show why s/he should get an exemption from the laws, will combine with Justice Rehnquist's "neutral laws of general applicability" and "rational basis" scrutiny, articulated in his Thomas dissent, to erode slowly the Sherbert standard of Government burden to show compelling interest when free expression of religion is hindered. But this case was decided in 1982; it would take most of a decade for these themes to coalesce into a new test for free exercise of religion. It all came to a head in the second Smith case (1990).
1187
Copyright © 2004-2007 William R. Long |