Frazee v. Illinois Department of Employment Security, 87-1945

• Decision Date: 29 March 1989
• Docket Number: No. 87-1945,87-1945
• Citation: 103 L.Ed.2d 914,489 U.S. 829,109 S.Ct. 1514
• Parties: William A. FRAZEE, Appellant, v. ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT SECURITY et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

489 U.S. 829

109 S.Ct. 1514

103 L.Ed.2d 914

William A. FRAZEE, Appellant,

v ILLINOIS DEPARTMENT OF EMPLOYMENT SECURITY et al.

No. 87-1945.

Argued March 1, 1989.

Decided March 29, 1989.

Syllabus

Appellant, who refused a temporary retail position because the job would have required him to work on Sunday in violation of his personal religious beliefs, applied for, and was denied, unemployment compensation benefits. The denial was affirmed by an administrative review board, an Illinois Circuit Court, and the State Appellate Court, which found that since appellant was not a member of an established religious sect or church and did not claim that his refusal to work resulted from a tenet, belief, or teaching of an established religious body, his personal professed religious belief, although unquestionably sincere, was not good cause for his refusal to work on Sunday.

Held: The denial of unemployment compensation benefits to appellant on the ground that his refusal to work was not based on tenets or dogma of an established religious sect violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 83 S.Ct. 1790, 10 L.Ed.2d 965, Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., 450 U.S. 707, 101 S.Ct. 1425, 67 L.Ed.2d 624, and Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Comm'n of Florida, 480 U.S. 136, 107 S.Ct. 1046, 94 L.Ed.2d 190, rested on the fact that each of the claimants had a sincere belief that religion required him or her to refrain from the work in question, not on the consideration that each of them was a member of a particular religious sect or on any tenet of the sect forbidding such work. While membership in a sect would simplify the problem of identifying sincerely held beliefs, the notion that one must be responding to the commands of a particular religious organization to claim the protection of the Free Exercise Clause is rejected. The sincerity or religious nature of appellant's belief was not questioned by the courts below and was conceded by the State, which offered no justification for the burden that the denial of benefits placed on appellant's right to exercise his religion. The fact that Sunday work has become a way of life does not constitute a state interest sufficiently compelling to override a legitimate free-exercise claim, since there is no evidence that there will be a mass movement away from Sunday employment if appellant succeeds on his claim. Pp. 832-835.

159 Ill.App.3d 474, 111 Ill.Dec. 400, 512 N.E.2d 789, reversed and remanded.

WHITE, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

David A. French, Ann Arbor, Mich., for appellant.

Robe t J. Ruiz, Chicago, Ill., for appellees.

Justice WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.

The Illinois Unemployment Insurance Act provides that "[a]n individual shall be ineligible for benefits if he has failed, without good cause, either to apply for available, suitable work when so directed . . . or to accept suitable work when offered him. . . ." Ill.Rev.Stat., ch. 48, ¶ 433 (1986). In April 1984, William Frazee refused a temporary retail position offered him by Kelly Services because the job would have required him to work on Sunday. Frazee told Kelly that, as a Christian, he could not work on "the Lord's day." Frazee then applied to the Illinois Department of Employment Security for unemployment benefits claiming that there was good cause for his refusal to work on Sunday. His application was denied. Frazee appealed the denial of benefits to the Department of Employment Security's Board of Review, which also denied his claim. The Board of Review stated: "When a refusal of work is based on religious convictions, the refusal must be based upon some tenets or dogma accepted by the individual of some church, sect, or denomination, and such a refusal based solely on an individual's personal belief is personal and noncompelling and does not render the work un- suitable." App. 18-19. The Board of Review concluded that Frazee had refused an offer of suitable work without good cause. The Circuit Court of the Tenth Judicial Circuit of Illinois, Peoria County, affirmed, finding that the agency's decision was "not contrary to law nor against the manifest weight of the evidence," thereby rejecting Frazee's claim based on the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Id., at 23.

Frazee's free exercise claim was again rejected by the Appellate Court of Illinois, Third District. 159 Ill.App.3d 474, 111 Ill.Dec. 400, 512 N.E.2d 789 (1987). The court characterized Frazee's refusal to work as resting on his "personal professed religious belief," and made it clear that it did "not question the sincerity of the plaintiff," id., at 475, 477, 111 Ill.Dec., at 401, 402, 512 N.E.2d, at 790, 791. It then engaged in a historical discussion of religious prohibitions against work on the Sabbath and, in particular, on Sunday. Nonetheless, the court distinguished Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 83 S.Ct. 1790, 10 L.Ed.2d 965 (1963); Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., 450 U.S. 707, 101 S.Ct. 1425, 67 L.Ed.2d 624 (1981); and Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Comm'n of Florida, 480 U.S. 136, 107 S.Ct. 1046, 94 L.Ed.2d 190 (1987), from the facts of Frazee's case. Unlike the claimants in Sherbert, Thomas, and Hobbie, Frazee was not a member of an established religious sect or church, nor did he claim that his refusal to work resulted from a "tenet, belief or teaching of an established religious body." 159 Ill.App.3d, at 477, 111 Ill.Dec., at 402, 512 N.E.2d, at 791. To the Illinois court, Frazee's position that he was "a Christian" and as such felt it wrong to work on Sunday was not enough. For a Free Exercise Clause claim to succeed, said the Illinois Appellate Court, "the injunction against Sunday labor must be found in a tenet or dogma of an established religious sect. [Frazee] does not profess to be a member of any such sect." Id., at 478-479, 111 Ill.Dec., at 403, 512 N.E.2d, at 792. The Illinois Supreme Court denied Frazee leave to appeal.

The mandatory appellate jurisdiction of this Court was invoked under 28 U.S.C. § 1257(2), since the state court rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of Illinois' statutory "good cause" requirement as applied in this case. We noted probable jurisdiction, 488 U.S. 814, 109 S.Ct. 50, 102 L.Ed.2d 29 (1988), and now reverse.

We have had more than one occasion before today to consider denials of unemployment compensation benefits to those who have refused work on the basis of their religious beliefs. In Sherbert v. Verner, supra, 37 U.S., at 410, 83 S.Ct., at 1797, the Court held that a State could not "constitutionally apply the eligibility provisions [of its unemployment-compensation program] so as to constrain a worker to abandon his religious convictions respecting the day of rest." Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., supra, also held that the State's refusal to award unemployment compensation benefits to one who terminated his job because his religious beliefs forbade participation in the production of armaments violated the First Amendment right to free exercise. Just two years ago, in Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Comm'n of Florida, supra, Florida's denial of unemployment compensation benefits to an employee discharged for her refusal to work on her Sabbath because of religious convictions adopted subsequent to employment was also declared to be a violation of the Free Exercise Clause. In each of these cases, the appellant was "forced to choose between fidelity to religious belief and . . . employment," id., 480 U.S., at 144, 107 S.Ct., at 1051, and we found "the forfeiture of unemployment benefits for choosing the former over the latter brings unlawful coercion to bear on the employee's choice" ibid. In each of these cases, we concluded that the denial of unemployment compensation benefits violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution, as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment.

It is true, as the Illinois court noted, that each of the claimants in those cases was a member of a particular religious sect, but none of those decisions turned on that consideration or on any tenet of the sect involved that forbade the work the claimant refused to...