Today in Supreme Court History: November 6, 1989

11/6/1989: Employment Division v. Smith argued.

Employment Division of Oregon

 

Comments

[dwb68]

For the non lawyers who read it, I wish these posts about important cases came with a 3 sentence blurb/summary why we care.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

My experience has been that the links themselves are useless to us non-lawyers. All you can do is copy the case name into google. About half the time, the summary of the Wikipedia result is al I want to know.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Here, for instance, the first half of the summary is all you need to know:

Employment Division, Department of Human Resources of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, is a United States Supreme Court case that held that the state could deny unemployment benefits to a person fired for violating a state prohibition on the use of peyote, even though the use of the drug was part of a religious ritual.

And if Josh wanted to provide his own summary, it could be stripped down further:

Held that the state could deny unemployment benefits to a person fired for violating a state prohibition on the use of peyote, even though the use of the drug was part of a religious ritual.