Sherbert V. Verner - Limiting of The Sherbert Test

Limiting of The Sherbert Test

The Supreme Court sharply curtailed the Sherbert Test in the 1980s, culminating in the 1990 landmark case Employment Division v. Smith. In Smith, the court held that free exercise exemptions were not required from generally applicable laws. In response to the Smith decision, Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) to reinstate the Sherbert Test. It purported to restore strict scrutiny analysis to all free exercise cases in which the plaintiff proves a substantial burden on the free exercise of his or her religion. However, four years later, the court struck down RFRA as applied to Constitutional interpretation. In City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997), the court found that RFRA, as applied to the Free Exercise Clause, impermissibly interfered with the judiciary's sole power to interpret the Constitution. However, this ruling did not necessarily limit RFRA's effect on interpretation of federal statutes. In fact, the court upheld RFRA as applied to other federal statutes in Gonzales v. UDV, 546 U.S. 418 (2006). In UDV, the court applied the statutory Sherbert Test created by RFRA and found that the action in question—use of a Schedule I drug in a religious ritual—was protected under the First Amendment.