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Torcaso
v. Watkins
367
U.S. 488 (1961)
The
Rothgerber Johnson & Lyons Religious Institutions
Group gratefully acknowledges the contribution of the
Ethics and Public Policy Center which provided the following case commentary taken from Terry Eastland, Religious
Liberty in the Supreme Court: The Cases That Define
the Debate over Church and State (1993).
Article
VI of the Constitution states: "[N]o religious test shall
ever be required as a qualification to any office or public
trust under the United States." But may a state require
a religious test? In Torcaso v. Watkins the Court
emphatically said it may not.
Article
37 of the Declaration of Rights of the Maryland Constitution
provided that "no religious test ought ever to be required
as a qualification for any office of profit or trust in
this state, other than a declaration of belief in the existence
of God." Roy Torcaso, an appointee to the office of notary
public in the state, was refused a commission to serve because
he would not, as required by Article 37, declare his belief
in the existence of God. He sued in state court, arguing
that the state constitutional requirement violated the First
and Fourteenth Amendments of the federal Constitution. The
Maryland courts rejected his challenge, but on appeal the
Supreme Court reversed.
Justice
Hugo Black, writing for the Court, rested the decision on
both the establishment and free-exercise provisions of the
religion clause. "[Neither a State nor the Federal Government
can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which
aid all religions as against nonbelievers," he wrote, in
a paraphrase of a passage he had composed for the Court
in Everson v. Board of Education (1947). Also, he
continued, Maryland's oath requirement "unconstitutionally
invades the appellant's freedom of belief and religion..
. ."
Justice
Black expressed the view of seven members of the Court.
The other two, Justices Felix Frankfurter and John M. Harlan
II, concurred in the result. No one other than Black wrote
in Torcaso, which firmly established that the religion
clause protects non-believers and believers alike.
Participating
in Torcaso v. Watkins, decided June 19, 1961, were
Chief Justice Earl Warren and Associate Justices Hugo L.
Black, William J. Brennan, Jr., Tom C. Clark, William O.
Douglas, Felix Frankfurter, John M. Harlan II, Potter Stewart,
and Charles E. Whittaker.
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