How did the Supreme Court’s earlier Sherbert v. Verner and Wisconsin v. Yoder decisions influence the religious-freedom test restored by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act?

The Supreme Court’s decisions in Sherbert v. Verner (1963) and Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) established a constitutional "balancing test" that required the government to grant religious exemptions from generally applicable laws unless it could demonstrate that denying such exemptions was necessary to achieve a compelling governmental interest through the least restrictive means.12

This judicial standard, often referred to as the Sherbert/Yoder test, was used by the Court until 1990, when it was largely rejected in Employment Division v. Smith. In response to Smith, Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 1993 to codify and restore this specific balancing test as a statutory requirement for federal government actions.21

In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., the Supreme Court applied this restored RFRA standard to determine that the government had failed to use the least restrictive means when requiring closely held for-profit corporations to provide insurance coverage for certain contraceptives, thereby infringing upon the owners' religious exercise.134