In 1957, Adele Sherbert became a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church while she worked for a textile mill in South Carolina. The mill changed its work week from five days to six, extending it into Saturdays in 1959. Her religious faith held that working on a Sabbath was sinful and her refusal to work on Saturdays led to her termination. South Carolina denied her unemployment compensation because she would not accept employment that required her to work on the Sabbath. She sued the state under the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled against her and an appeal was made to the Supreme Court.
In 1963, in Sherbert v. Verner, the Warren Court found that the denial of unemployment benefits placed an unconstitutional burden on Ms. Sherbert’s free exercise of her religion, and that the state of South Carolina had not shown that there was a compelling state interest in the enforcement of the eligibility requirements that justified the infringement of her religious rights. It reversed the South Carolina Supreme Court ruling.
From 1963 until the late 1980s, the Sherbert Test, as it came to be known, was applied to cases involving the free exercise of religious beliefs. The test involved three related questions:
1. Did the government place an undue burden on an individual’s free exercise of religion?
If so:
2. Was there a compelling state interest that justified the burden?
3. Was the law the least restrictive method of achieving the state’s interest?
This test was confirmed in 1972’s Wisconsin v. Yoder, in which the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the free exercise of a parent’s religious belief (in this case Amish) trumped the state’s requirement of compulsory education beyond the eighth grade.
By the late 1980s, the composition of the Supreme Court had become more conservative, and the decisions regarding the free exercise of religion began to reflect that as the Sherbert test was slowly whittled away.