Sherbert V. Verner Case Analysis

Sherbert v. Verner Sherbert v. Verner, was argued on April 24, 1963, and the Supreme Court, in a 7-2 ruling, reversed the opinion of the lower court that had denied the appellant, Adeil Sherbert, unemployment benefits, on June 17, 1963. The appellant had been a Seventh Day Adventist from South Carolina whose religious practices prevented her from working on Saturdays. Her inability to work Saturdays caused her to be fired when her former workplace took up a six-day workweek, and subsequently, no other jobs would hire her for the same reason. Although Sherbert tried to obtain unemployment insurance, the South Carolina government denied her claim, stating that benefits were unavailable to people whom potentially had employment available to …show more content…
The South Carolina State Supreme Court had found that the burden was on the state to show that they were not discriminating against the individual in a specific manner, and that their laws were not unreasonable or unnecessarily restricting on individual freedoms. However, the state contended that they had not denied benefits to Sherbert because of her religion or religious practices, and that Sherbert 's adherence to the Seventh Day Adventist faith was belying the point. Instead, they had merely utilized the same rule for determining benefits eligibility that would apply to any person who had applied for unemployment. Although Sherbert 's specific practices happened to make her ineligible for the benefits, the state had not set about to individually discriminate against her, nor was the state preventing her from practicing her faith. The South Carolina State Supreme Court agreed with this argument, and ruled in favor of the denying the …show more content…
In this opinion, Brennan stated that Sherbert had, in fact, experienced a significant limitation on her ability to worship as she pleased, because her religious practices had clashed with the state 's unemployment claims law. His opinion invoked the idea that Sherbert was effectively unable to obtain unemployment under the conditions created by the state due to her religious practices, which was a violation of her First Amendment rights. Because the State of South Carolina had enforced the law in violation of Sherbert 's First Amendment rights, the state had also violated the establishment clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which applies Constitutional rights not only to federal law but state laws as