United States v. Lee, 455 U.S. 252 (1982)
United States v. Lee
No. 80-767
Argued November 2, 1981
Decided February 23, 1982
455 U.S. 252
APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR
THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA
Syllabus
Appellee, a farmer and carpenter, is a member of the Old Order Amish, who believe that there is a religiously based obligation to provide for their fellow members the kind of assistance contemplated by the social security system. During certain years when he employed other Amish to work on his farm and in his carpentry shop, appellee failed to withhold social security taxes from his employees or to pay the employer’s share of such taxes because he believed that payment of the taxes and receipt of benefits would violate the Amish faith. After the Internal Revenue Service assessed him for the unpaid taxes, appellee paid a certain amount and then sued in Federal District Court for a refund, claiming that imposition of the taxes violated his First Amendment free exercise of religion rights and those of his employees. The District Court held the statutes requiring appellee to pay social security taxes unconstitutional as applied, basing its holding on both 26 U.S.C. § 1402(g), which exempts from social security taxes, on religious grounds, self-employed Amish and others, and the First Amendment.
Held:
1. The exemption provided by § 1402(g), being available only to self-employed individuals, does not apply to employers or employees, and hence appellee and his employees are not within its provisions. P. 256.
2. The imposition of social security taxes is not unconstitutional as applied to such persons as appellee who object on religious grounds to receipt of public insurance benefits and to payment of taxes to support public insurance funds. Pp. 256-261.
(a) While there is a conflict between the Amish faith and the obligations imposed by the social security system, not all burdens on religion are unconstitutional. The state may justify a limitation on religious liberty by showing that it is essential to accomplish an overriding governmental interest. Pp. 256-258.
(b) Widespread individual voluntary coverage under social security would undermine the soundness of the social security system, and would make such system almost a contradiction in terms, and difficult, if not impossible, to administer. Pp. 258-259.
(c) It would be difficult to accommodate the social security system with myriad exceptions flowing from a wide variety of religious beliefs such as the Amish. Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, distinguished. There is no principled way, for purposes of this case, to distinguish between general taxes and those imposed under the Social Security Act. The tax system could not function if denominations were allowed to challenge it because tax payments were spent in a manner that violates their religious belief. Because the broad public interest in maintaining a sound tax system is of such a high order, religious belief in conflict with the payment of taxes affords no basis for resisting the tax. Pp. 259-260.
(d) Congress, in § 1402(g), has accommodated, to the extent compatible with a comprehensive national program, the practices of those who believe it a violation of their faith to participate in the social security system. When followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes that are binding on others in that activity. Granting an exemption from social security taxes to an employer operates to impose the employer’s religious faith on the employees. The tax imposed on employers to support the social security system must be uniformly applicable to all, except as Congress explicitly provides otherwise. Pp. 260-261.
497 F.Supp. 180, reversed and remanded.
BURGER, C.J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BRENNAN, WHITE, MARSHALL, BLACKMUN, POWELL, REHNQUIST, and O’CONNOR, JJ., joined. STEVENS, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, post, p. 261.