City of Boerne v. Flores

I write to respond briefly to the claim of Justice O’Con-nor’s dissent (hereinafter the dissent) that historical materials support a result contrary to the one reached in Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U. S. 872 (1990). See post, p. 544 (dissenting opinion). We held in Smith that the Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause “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).’” 494 U. S., at 879…