Callahan v. Woods

• Decision Date: 05 October 1981
• Docket Number: No. 79-4612,79-4612
• Citation: 658 F.2d 679
• Parties: Robert Dale CALLAHAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Marion WOODS, Director California Dept. of Benefit Payments and Joseph Califano, Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare of the United States, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 679

658 F.2d 679

Robert Dale CALLAHAN, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Marion WOODS, Director California Dept. of Benefit Payments and Joseph Califano, Secretary of Health Education and Welfare of the United States, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 79-4612.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted June 10, 1981.

Decided Oct. 5, 1981.

Alan Jaroslovsky, Santa Rosa, Cal., for plaintiff-appellant.

Leonard Schaitman, Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., for defendants-appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Before ADAMS, ^* GOODWIN and FARRIS, Circuit Judges.

ADAMS, Circuit Judge.

On this appeal we are asked to determine whether the state and federal governments, in requiring Robert D. Callahan to obtain a social security number for his daughter before she could obtain public assistance benefits, even though procuring such a number would contravene what appellant asserts is a sincere religious belief, violated his First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. Because the district court, 479 F.Supp. 621, in awarding summary judgment for the government, incorrectly construed plaintiff's beliefs as non-religious, we reverse its judgment and remand for a determination of the governments' interest in the regulation.

I.

Callahan is married and has two children. Following his release from prison in 1974 he was unemployed, and his family became eligible to receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) benefits for both children. The State of California paid those benefits in full until May 10, 1977, when the County of Sonoma notified Callahan that his younger child, Serena, for whom Callahan refused to obtain a social security number, was no longer eligible. Callahan, his wife, and their older child all held social security numbers at the time. The State, in requiring a social security number for AFDC eligibility acted pursuant to the mandate of Section 402(a)(25) of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. § 602(a)(25) (1976). ¹

Although born a Catholic and raised as a Baptist, Callahan did not develop a strong interest in religion until 1973, while at San Quentin. Since then he has read the Bible for half an hour to an hour each day, and is now a member of the West Santa Rosa Baptist Church. Callahan, who claims to have a literal belief in the Bible, asserts that his refusal to comply with the social security number requirement for Serena is solely religious. He cites in support of his objection to social security numbers a religious text, Chapter 13 of the New Testament Book of Revelation, which reads in part:

16. (H)e causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads;

17. And that no man might buy or sell, save that he had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name;

18. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred three-score and six.

According to Callahan, social security numbers are the "mark of the beast" the sign of the Antichrist who threatens to control the world. To accept a number, he maintains, is to "serve the beast." Callahan acknowledges that his aversion to social security and other personal identification numbers predates his interest in religion. Nonetheless, he asserts that his objection is now religious in nature, that the Revelation text articulates a concept that he felt in a more inchoate form before studying the Bible. He and his wife freely accepted social security numbers, but according to appellant they did so before he arrived at his religious understanding. Although Callahan did not wish to obtain a number for his first child he did so, apparently fearing violation of his parole, which terminated in December 1975. Now he believes that, on behalf of Serena, ² he must observe his religious objections to assigning numbers and preserve her freedom to avoid serving the beast, even though she may well decide later to obtain a number voluntarily.

Upon receiving notification that benefits for Serena would be terminated, Callahan, pursuant to California administrative procedure, sought a hearing before the Department of Benefit Payments. The hearing officer found that Callahan held sincere religious beliefs that militated against issuance of a social security number for his daughter; nonetheless he held that federal regulations required the issuance of such a number before any more benefits could be paid on behalf of Serena. Callahan petitioned the Sonoma Superior Court for a writ of mandamus to compel the payment of those benefits. The Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare (now Health and Human Services) was joined in that action as the real party in interest, and the case was removed to federal court. In the district court, Callahan and the Secretary filed cross-motions for summary judgment. The judge held an evidentiary hearing, consisting of live testimony by the plaintiff. On the basis of that hearing as well as the pleadings and affidavits previously filed, the court found that Callahan's views on the undesirability of personal identification numbers were, though sincere, not religious in nature. Rather, he found that they were primarily manifestations of a personal, secular philosophy developed during Callahan's thirteen years of incarceration. The court concluded that although Callahan relied upon "concepts admittedly drawn from traditional religious text," he did so only "to justify and support a secular, philosophical objection to the use of social security numbers by the government." Callahan v. Woods, 479 F.Supp. 621, 625 (N.D.Cal.1979). Consequently the court granted the government's summary judgment motion, holding that the state, in requiring Callahan to acquire a number for Serena before she could receive AFDC benefits, did not burden a protected interest.

II.

A religious claim, to merit protection under the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, ³ must satisfy two basic criteria. First, the claimant's proffered belief must be sincerely held; the First Amendment does not extend to "so-called religions which ... are obviously shams and absurdities and whose members are patently devoid of religious sincerity." Theriault v. Carlson, 495 F.2d 390, 395 (5th Cir. 1974), cert. denied, 419 U.S. 1003, 95 S.Ct. 323, 42 L.Ed.2d 279 (1974); see Stevens v. Berger, 428 F.Supp. 896, 899 (E.D.N.Y.1977). Second, as the Supreme Court held in Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 215-16, 92 S.Ct. 1526, 1532-33, 32 L.Ed.2d 15 (1972), the claim must be rooted in religious belief, not in "purely secular" philosophical concerns. Cf. United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163, 185, 85 S.Ct. 850, 863, 13 L.Ed.2d 733 (1965) (test for religious belief within meaning of draft law exemptions is whether beliefs professed are sincerely held and, in claimant's scheme of things, religious). ⁴

Initially we are faced with some ambiguity in the district court's application of the two-part test. It found that the plaintiff was sincere in his objection to identification numbers, but that his objection was not "rooted in religious belief." 479 F.Supp. at 624. The court did not explicitly attach its finding of sincerity to a specific idea or claim of Callahan's. Arguably, the court might have meant merely that Callahan sincerely dislikes social security numbers, but sincerity of that sort would be obvious from the very existence of this lawsuit. A First Amendment inquiry into sincerity generally has a different focus, addressing the sincerity with which the claimant holds the allegedly religious belief itself. See, e. g., Theriault v. Carlson, supra, 495 F.2d at 394-95. Thus, construed properly the trial court's blanket finding of sincerity must mean that the plaintiff, when he says that he opposes personal identification numbers because they are the "mark of the beast" and tools of the Antichrist, sincerely believes in the diabolical nature of those numbers. The remaining question, then, is whether Callahan's objections are "rooted in" a belief that is religious in nature. See Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 215-16, 92 S.Ct. 1526, 1532-33, 32 L.Ed.2d 15 (1977).

In purportedly examining whether Callahan's views were "rooted in" his alleged scriptural interpretation, the court focused on issues that in this case were more relevant to the already settled question of sincerity. It is of course imaginable that in some circumstances a person might assert a First Amendment claim and attempt to justify it with a religious belief which, though sincerely held, was simply irrelevant to the claim. For example, Yoder involved claims by the Amish that public education for their children after the eighth grade violated their religious beliefs. If in that case the court had determined that the objection of the Amish to education was unrelated to their religious beliefs, then their constitutional claim would have had no merit even though their religious beliefs were sincere. See Yoder, 406 U.S. at 215-16, 92 S.Ct. at 1532-33. But just as the Supreme Court found in that case that the claim was related to the religious belief of the Amish, 406 U.S. at 215-16, 92 S.Ct. at 1532-33, here the relevance of Callahan's proffered beliefs to his claim is apparent. Indeed, it is hard to imagine how Callahan's belief that social security numbers are the "mark of the beast" could, if sincere, be considered irrelevant to his stand against the issuance of a number for Serena. Once his belief is established as sincere, it would seem undisputable that Callahan's objection must be "rooted in" that belief, at least in part.

Nonetheless, the court concluded that Callahan's objection to identification numbers, although sincere, was actually "rooted in" secular and philosophical concerns. In reaching this result, the court emphasized that Callahan's aversion to...