Religious Belief and Employment

In 2014, Idaho construction worker and father George Ricks tried to become an independent contractor. In Idaho, it is a misdemeanor to work as a contractor without first registering with the state. Part of this process requires the registering party to provide a social security number. As an observant Christian, Ricks believes that it is against his faith to “participate in a governmental universal identification system, especially to buy or sell goods and services”. This comes out of a Biblical interpretation from Revelations 13:16-18. Ricks asked the Idaho Board of Contractors to grant him an exemption on the basis of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In July 2019, the Idaho Supreme Court declined to hear Ricks’s case. In response to this, Becket, on Ricks’s behalf, filed a petition to the SCOTUS. 

The salient issue in this case is whether the Idaho Board of Contractors violated Ricks’s rights to freely exercise religion by refusing to accept alternative forms of identification other than a social security number. 

I believe that given the circumstances of the case, Ricks’s Constitutional rights to free exercise of religion were violated. I will break down this argument by addressing specific details about the case, as well as interrogating previously established Constitutional precedent related to the free exercise clause. In doing so, I will also provide counter-arguments and rebuttals, which ultimately will support Ricks. 

It is important to understand specific details about this case. According to Ricks’s defense, “a federal law dictates that the Board of Contractors will receive extra funding if it collects contractors’ social security numbers.” There was a clear financial incentive for the Board of Contractors to deny Ricks an exemption based on his religious belief. Additionally, “other licensing laws already grant accommodations to foreign residents who don’t have social security numbers.” Foreigners residing in the U.S. should not be given preferential treatment to American citizens, especially with regards to Constitutionally-protected rights. Ricks was willing and able to provide any other legitimate form of identification, including his birth certificate. 

There are two cases that come to mind with regard to free exercise which I believe support Ricks. First is the broad precedent set in 1879 with Reynolds v. The United States. One point made in this case is that the free exercise clause protects belief, not action. This point does not support Ricks because he was acting on his religious beliefs. However, the text in the decision also states that “when the offence consists of a positive act which is knowingly done, it would be dangerous to hold that the offender might escape punishment because he religiously believed that the law which he had broken ought never to have been made” (Muñoz, 17). 

The second case of relevance is the 1990 decision Employment Division v. Smith. This decision held that the free exercise clause generally requires no religious exemptions from laws that are neutral and generally applicable. (Background for this case can be found here.) In taking up Ricks’s case, the Supreme Court would be forced to revisit this decision. 

The First Amendment begins with the expression “Congress shall make no law...”. This was amended in Cantwell v. Connecticut, and the free exercise clause was applied to states. Even if the Cantwell decision had not been decided this way, the state should not bar Ricks from becoming an independent contractor on ethically unjustifiable grounds. No slippery slope argument can be made with regards to Ricks because there is a clear way for the government to solve the problem (i.e., obtaining other legitimate methods of identification). In a circumstance as such, the state should defer to Ricks’s right to freely exercise religion because this action does not negatively impact anybody else. Ricks isn’t asking for an exemption to slaughter a sacrificial lamb at one of his construction sites. 

In summary, I presented the basic information regarding the facts of the case. Then, I identified the salient issue in the case – whether the Idaho Board of Contractors violated Ricks’s right to freely exercise religion by refusing to accept alternative forms of identification other than a social security number. Next, I provided examples of two cases decided in the U.S. Supreme Court which establish precedent for Constitutional limitations on free exercise. Lastly, I offered my own analysis and response to the issue at hand.  States should almost always heir on the side of protecting constituents’ religious freedoms, so long as they do not pose harm or risk to other individuals.