Fulton v. Philadelphia: Religious Exemptions from Generally Applicable Laws
Legal Sidebari
Fulton v. Philadelphia: Religious Exemptions
from Generally Applicable Laws
June 22, 2021
The Supreme Court issued its highly anticipated decision in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia on June 17,
2021. In Fulton, a Catholic foster care agency raised religious objections to complying with
Philadelphia’s policies prohibiting contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation. The
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rejected the agency’s claims, citing a 1990 case called
Employment Division v. Smith. Under Smith, a foundational case interpreting the First Amendment’s Free
Exercise Clause, religious entities are usually not entitled to constitutional exemptions from neutral,
generally applicable laws. On appeal, the agency asked the Supreme Court to overrule Smith. In a
unanimous judgment, the Supreme Court ruled for the agency, but a majority of the Court declined to
overrule Smith. This Legal Sidebar discusses the Court’s decision in this case, including the majority and
concurring opinions, and discusses the implications of the decision for Congress.
Legal Background: Employment Division v. Smith
The First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause provides that the government “shall make no law . . .
prohibiting the free exercise” of religion. The Supreme Court has said that the government generally may
not “target[] religious beliefs as such.” If a law restricts religious “practices because of their religious
motivation” or discriminates based on religious status, it will be subject to strict scrutiny, meaning the law
is invalid unless the government can show that it “is justified by a compelling interest and is narrowly
tailored to advance that interest.”
In Employment Division v. Smith, however, the Supreme Court held that a law does not violate the First
Amendment if the burden on religious exercise does not result from hostility to religion, but is “merely
the incidental effect of a generally applicable and otherwise valid provision.” Justice Scalia, writing for
the five-Justice majority in Smith, rejected a free exercise claim brought by two members of a Native
American church. The state had denied them unemployment benefits after they were fired for using
peyote in violation of state criminal drug laws. The church members argued that this denial of benefits
impermissibly burdened their religious practice, given that the peyote was used for sacramental purposes.
The Supreme Court rejected this claim, stating that “the right of free exercise does not relieve an
individual of the obligation to comply with a ‘valid and neutral law of general applicability on the ground
that the law proscribes (or prescribes) conduct that his religion prescribes (or proscribes).’”
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Justice Scalia acknowledged that some prior Supreme Court decisions had applied a heightened standard
to analyze free-exercise claims, but wrote that those earlier cases concerned laws that were not truly
“generally applicable.” Instead, those cases involved systems like unemployment-benefit programs in
which the government decided case by case whether to apply laws through “individualized . . .
assessment[s].” Because these cases entailed a greater risk of religious discrimination in individual
exemption decisions, they required a heightened standard of review: “where the State has in place a
system of individual exemptions, it may not refuse to extend that system to cases of ‘religious hardship’
without compelling reason.” The Court held that these prior cases had “nothing to do with an across-the-
board criminal prohibition on a particular form of conduct.”
Supreme Court cases after Smith confirmed that its reasoning applies only to laws that are truly neutral
and generally applicable. For example, in Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, the Supreme
Court held that a local ordinance prohibiting certain types of animal sacrifice violated the Free Exercise
Clause. The Court held that the law’s purpose was “the suppression of religion,” and therefore, the
ordinance was not “neutral” under Smith. Further, the Court said that the city had been granting
exemptions for secular activities on “a per se basis” but disallowing “killings for religious reasons.” The
Court concluded the city was singling out “religious practice” for “discriminatory treatment,”
“devalu[ing] religious reasons for killing by judging them to be of lesser import than nonreligious
reasons.” In the Court’s view, the city’s system for granting exemptions required “an evaluation of the
particular justification for the killing,” representing “a system of ‘individualized governmental assessment
of the reasons for the relevant conduct’” that triggered heightened scrutiny under Smith.
Lower courts have issued various decisions assessing laws that entail individual exemptions under Smith
and Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye. A number of courts have held that the mere existence of a
discretionary exemption for secular activities does not trigger strict scrutiny. Instead, these courts have
inquired into the purpose and past applications of the exemption, asking whether the exemption reflects
discriminatory animus against religious practice. To identify discrimination, some courts have inquired
into whether the secular exemptions are “comparable” to the religious exemption sought by the
challenger, or whether instead the state had a valid, nondiscriminatory reason to treat the religious activity
differently. More narrowly, one opinion ruled that “Smith’s ‘individualized exemption’ exception is
limited . . . to systems that are designed to make case-by-case determinations” and does not apply to
statutes simply because they “contain express exceptions for objectively defined categories of persons.”
Other courts, however, have held that strict scrutiny can be triggered even if the exemptions are not
applied on an “individualized” basis, with one opinion (written by then-Judge Alito) saying that the
government ordinarily may not create “a categorical exemption for individuals with a secular objection
but not for individuals with a religious objection.” Accordingly, it appears that there has been some
inconsistency in lower courts’ interpretation of this aspect of Smith.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court issued a decision considering the treatment of secular and religious
activities under generally applicable laws. The Court ruled in Tandon v. Newsom that a law cannot be
considered neutral and generally applicable if it treats “any comparable secular activity more favorably
than religious exercise.” To determine whether an exempted secular activity is “comparable” to a covered
religious activity, the two activities “must be judged against the asserted government interest that justifies
the regulation at issue.” Applying this standard, the Supreme Court granted a preliminary injunction
temporarily staying enforcement of state regulations that limited religious gatherings in response to the
COVID-19 pandemic. The Court applied heightened scrutiny because the state treated secular activities
such as haircuts and retail shopping more favorably than at-home religious gatherings, without showing
that the secular activities posed a lower risk of transmission of COVID-19. Some commentators saw this
holding as further limiting Smith and later, some said it foreshadowed the Court’s ruling in Fulton.
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Fulton v. City of Philadelphia
Factual Background
In Fulton, Catholic Social Services (CSS), a religious foster care agency, sued the City of Philadelphia
after the City stopped referring foster children to the agency. The City had discovered that CSS would not
comply with local policies prohibiting sexual orientation discrimination—policies that were included both
in its contract with the city and in a local ordinance. While the City offered to continue working with CSS
by offering new contracts to renew services, the agency objected to the continued inclusion of contract
language forbidding sexual orientation discrimination. In a provision titled “Rejection of Referral,” the
contract specified that providers could not reject a child or family “for Services” on the basis of their
sexual orientation, unless the Commissioner of Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services granted an
exception, in the Commissioner’s “sole discretion.” The City had never granted an exception under this
provision in its other contractual relationships, and took the position that this provision only allowed it to
grant exceptions for referrals from the City, not from more general nondiscrimination provisions
governing other types of services.
CSS argued that by insisting on contract provisions prohibiting discrimination, the City violated the Free
Exercise Clause, saying the City applied its nondiscrimination policy in a way that “was neither neutral
nor generally applicable” but instead targeted CSS’s religious exercise. The Third Circuit rejected CSS’s
evidence that purportedly showed the City “acted out of religious hostility,” concluding that CSS had not
been “treated differently because of its religious beliefs.” Accordingly, the Third Circuit ruled that the
City’s nondiscrimination policies were “general, neutrally applied legal requirements,” and that the case
was therefore governed by Smith, so that CSS’s “religiously motivated conduct enjoy[ed] no special
protections or exemption.”
Majority Opinion
The Supreme Court voted unanimously to reverse the decision of the Third Circuit. The majority opinion,
written by Chief Justice Roberts and joined by five other Justices, concluded that the nondiscrimination
policy contained in the contract was not generally applicable because it contained an exemption, as
described above. Describing Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, the majority said that a law “lacks general
applicability if it prohibits religious conduct while permitting secular conduct that undermines the
government’s asserted interests in a similar way.” The Court rejected the City’s (and trial court’s) reading
of this contractual exception as applying only to referrals from the City, concluding instead that the text
broadly encompassed all “services.” Although the City had never actually granted an exception under this
provision, the majority concluded that it was “the creation of a formal mechanism for granting
exceptions” that made the policy “not generally applicable,” because this discretionary mechanism invited
“the government to decide which reasons for not complying with the policy are worthy of solicitude.”
Ultimately, the Court held that the contract “incorporate[d] a system of individual exemptions,” and
accordingly, the City could not “refuse to extend that [exemption] system to cases of ‘religious hardship’
without compelling reason.”
The City also argued that CSS had violated a local ordinance prohibiting discrimination in public
accommodations. CSS responded in part by claiming again that the City had allowed exceptions for
secular reasons, so that the ordinance was not generally applicable. However, the majority decided that it
did not need to reach any constitutional questions related to this ordinance after concluding, contrary to
the holding of the trial court, that the ordinance did not extend to “certification as a foster parent,”
because that certification “is not readily accessible to the public.”
Because the city policy contained in the new contract was not generally applicable under Smith, the
majority opinion applied strict scrutiny to analyze whether the City could validly apply its
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nondiscrimination requirement to CSS. The City argued that its nondiscrimination policy served “three
compelling interests: maximizing the number of foster parents, protecting the City from liability, and
ensuring equal treatment of prospective foster parents and foster children.” The Court ruled that while
these interests might be compelling when considering the nondiscrimination policies generally, they were
insufficient to justify specifically “denying an exception to CSS.” The majority said that the City had not
shown how exempting CSS from the nondiscrimination policy would undermine these interests. For
example, there was insufficient evidence to prove that an exemption allowing CSS to participate would
reduce the number of available foster parents or create a greater risk of the City being sued. Further, while
granting CSS an exception might lead to unequal treatment of prospective foster parents and foster
children, the Court said that where the City’s contract would allow some exceptions, it had not shown a
“compelling reason why it has a particular interest in denying an exception to CSS.”
Accordingly, the majority declined to overrule Smith, although CSS had asked the Court to do so.
Because the City’s policy was not generally applicable under Smith, the Court had analyzed it “under the
strictest scrutiny regardless of Smith,” and had “no occasion to reconsider that decision” in Fulton.
Concurring Opinions
While the judgment of the Supreme Court was unanimous, Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch did not
join Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion, instead concurring only in the judgment.
Justice Alito wrote a lengthy concurring opinion joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch. He would have
overruled Smith, describing the decision’s interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause as “hard to defend.”
In its place, he would have instituted a strict scrutiny standard: “A law that imposes a substantial burden
on religious exercise can be sustained only if it is narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government
interest.” In this case, he would have ruled that the City failed to meet this standard. Justice Alito stated
that CSS’s actions had never actually “hindered any same-sex couples from becoming foster parents”
because “the record reflect[ed]” that no same-sex couples had sought to work with the agency, and CSS
was willing to refer couples to other agencies. As a result, Justice Alito wrote, CSS’s policy of not
working with same-sex couples had “only one effect:” expressing “the idea that same-sex couples should
not be foster parents because only a man and a woman should marry.” In his view, the City could not
suppress CSS’s “religious practice . . . simply because it expresses an idea that some find hurtful.”
Justice Gorsuch also wrote a separate concurrence, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito, criticizing the
majority’s approach to resolving the case. Among other issues, he argued that the majority opinion erred
in its interpretation of the contract and in “trailblazing through the Philadelphia city code,” pointing out
that the lower courts had resolved these issues differently—or not at all.
Further, although Justice Barrett joined the majority opinion, she also wrote a short concurrence saying
that while she believed there were “compelling” arguments “against Smith,” the Court would likely also
face difficulties in determining what standard should replace Smith. Her opinion was joined by Justices
Kavanaugh and Breyer, though Justice Breyer did not join the paragraph casting doubt on Smith.
Implications for Congress
The Supreme Court’s decision in Fulton will likely make it easier for religious entities to obtain religious
exemptions from government regulation. As discussed above, a number of lower courts had interpreted
the “system of individual exemptions” exception from Smith relatively narrowly, only applying a
heightened standard to a claim seeking a religious exemption if there is some proof of religious hostility
or discrimination, or if a law’s application involves case-by-case, individualized decisions. The majority
opinion in Fulton, however, suggested that if an exemption could allow religious activities to be treated
differently than secular activities, the availability of the exemption triggers heightened scrutiny regardless
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of whether or how that exemption has been applied. For example, Fulton indicated that strict scrutiny may
apply to a denial of a religious exemption even without analyzing whether the government has granted
comparable exemptions for secular activities, contrary to some lower court opinions applying Smith.
Nonetheless, Tandon could suggest that comparability matters in some cases, possibly if a law entails
favorable treatment for specified secular activities, as opposed to discretionary individual exemptions.
Thus, Fulton could have significant consequences for any federal laws that currently allow regulated
entities to seek individual exemptions from complying with those laws. Entities seeking religiously
motivated exemptions could cite Fulton to trigger strict scrutiny on the grounds that the law is not
generally applicable and that Smith therefore does not apply. The strict scrutiny standard makes it harder
for the government to justify applying the law against the religious entity, making it more likely that
religious plaintiffs will succeed in asserting a constitutional objection. Further, the majority opinion in
Fulton clarifies that even if the government generally has a compelling interest in prohibiting
discrimination, that general interest may not justify applying nondiscrimination laws to particular
religious entities. Instead, Fulton suggests that the government has to provide evidence showing how
granting an exemption to that particular plaintiff would undermine the government’s interests.
Accordingly, going forward, Congress may consider looking closely at the exemptions it allows from its
laws, and particularly, at whether religious exemptions are required, or whether it has a compelling
interest in applying laws to religious entities.
In some senses, Congress’s ability to respond to Fulton may be somewhat limited. While Congress can, in
some circumstances, provide more protection for religious exercise or create exemptions for religious
activities, it cannot provide less protection for religious exercise than the Constitution requires or
otherwise alter constitutional standards. Thus, for example, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration
Act (RFRA) has already instituted a strict scrutiny standard for federal actions that substantially burden
religion. However, if Congress agreed with Justice Alito that Smith should be overruled, the Supreme
Court has cast doubt on Congress’s ability to do the same for state actions that burden religion. By
contrast, if Congress disagreed with the outcome in Fulton, Justice Alito’s concurring opinion suggested
that a government might be able to avoid triggering strict scrutiny under the majority opinion in Fulton if
it eliminates existing exemptions, so that the law becomes generally applicable under Smith.
At least two other petitions currently pending before the Supreme Court ask the Court to overrule Smith,
potentially presenting the Justices with another opportunity to revisit Smith in the near future. Three
Justices clearly expressed in Fulton that they would overrule Smith, and Justices Barrett and Kavanaugh
suggested they could be amenable to overruling Smith in an appropriate case, if they found a proper
alternative standard. The Court is set to consider both cases at its June 24 conference.
Author Information
Valerie C. Brannon
Legislative Attorney
Disclaimer
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