holding that, where a Sunday law only inconvenienced members of the Orthodox Jewish faith who believed it necessary to work on Sunday, “the statute at bar does not make unlawful any religious practices of appellants; the Sunday law simply regulates a secular activity and, as applied to appellants, operates so as to make the practice of their religious beliefs more expensive. . . . And even these are not faced with as serious a choice as forsaking their religious practices or subjecting themselves to criminal prosecution.”
How later courts described this case
- holding that, where a Sunday law only inconvenienced members of the Orthodox Jewish faith who believed it necessary to work on Sunday, “the statute at bar does not make unlawful any religious practices of appellants; the Sunday law simply regulates a secular activity and, as applied to appellants, operates so as to make the practice of their religious beliefs more expensive. . . . And even these are not faced with as serious a choice as forsaking their religious practices or subjecting themselves to criminal prosecution.”
- holding that laws requiring Sunday closing did not burden the exercise of Orthodox Jewish shopowners who had to undergo the expense of closing two days per week in order to accommodate their own Sabbath in addition to the legally-mandated closing day
- holding that a Sunday-closing law did not burden the exercise of religion by Orthodox Jewish merchants since “requiring “some financial sacrifice” from believers is not of the same order as making a religious practice unlawful in itself.
- holding that financial costs to religious institutions do not by themselves establish a First Amendment violation, because the government can validly regulate religion
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by Michaelson Ex Rel. Lewis v. Booth, 437 F. Supp. 439 (1977)
366 U.S. 599, 81 S.Ct. 1144, 6 L.Ed.2d 563 (1961), and others, are inapplicable since the electors’ choices are mutually exclusive.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Stewart,
dissenting.
I agree with substantially all that Mr. Justice Brennan has written. Pennsylvania has passed a law which compels an Orthodox Jew to choose between his religious faith and his economic survival. That is a cruel choice. It is a choice which I think no State can constitutionally demand. For me this is not something that can be swept under the rug and forgotten in the interest of enforced Sunday togetherness. I think the impact of this law upon these appellants grossly violates their constitutional right to the free exercise of their religion.