Limitations on Free Exercise Rights
Polygamy and Other Early Cases
The Supreme Court’s first decisions concerning the
Free Exercise Clause arose from the federal government’s
campaign in the late 19th century against
polygamy among members of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) – also known as
Mormons – in the Utah, Idaho and Arizona territories.
In Reynolds v. United States (1879), the court
upheld the successful criminal prosecution of a
prominent Mormon, George Reynolds, for practicing
bigamy in Utah. Reynolds had argued that it
was a religious obligation for him to take multiple
wives and that the Free Exercise Clause should
immunize him from prosecution. But the court
concluded that while the Free Exercise Clause
guarantees freedom of religious belief, it does not
protect religiously motivated actions – such as
polygamy – if those actions conflict with the law.
Writing for a unanimous court, Chief Justice
Morrison Waite said,“Laws are made for the government
of actions, and while they cannot interfere
with mere religious belief and opinions, they
may [interfere] with practices. ”Waite went on to
state that to permit someone to use religious belief
as an excuse to ignore legal requirements would
“in effect … permit every citizen to become a law
unto himself.”
A decade later, in another case that involved
polygamy, the Supreme Court reinforced the view
that the federal government may suppress religious
practices that conflict with the law. In Davis v. Beason (1890), the court upheld the conviction of
an LDS church member who had falsely sworn a
public oath that he did not advocate or believe in
polygamy, as was required at the time from persons
who sought to vote in the Utah, Idaho or Arizona
territories. The right of free exercise, the court
ruled in Davis, provided no defense to the charge
of swearing a false oath, even though Davis himself
had not engaged in a plural marriage.
The same year as the Davis ruling, the Supreme
Court upheld lower court orders that had placed
the entire LDS church and all of its property
under the control of the federal government on
the grounds that the church and its leadership
constituted an organization that unlawfully advocated plural marriage. Only after the church firmly
and formally renounced polygamy later that year
did the federal government relinquish control and
restore the church’s property.
The Supreme Court’s opinions in Reynolds and
Davis, which rejected the idea that religiously
motivated actions were exempt from general laws,
remained controlling precedents for more than 70
years. Not until the 1960s, under Chief Justice
Earl Warren and his successors, did the court
begin to issue decisions that expanded the type
of activity protected by the Free Exercise Clause.
But even before Warren’s tenure as chief justice,
the Supreme Court issued a number of important
decisions that began to reshape the government’s
role in safeguarding religious freedom.
Photo credit: Oswald Eckstein/Corbis