560
Opinion of Souter, J.
established long before, that the Free Exercise Clause is offended when prohibiting religious exercise results from a law that is not neutral or generally applicable. It is this noncontroversial principle, that the Free Exercise Clause requires neutrality and general applicability, that is at issue here. But before turning to the relationship of Smith to this case, it will help to get the terms in order, for the significance of the Smith rule is not only in its statement that the Free Exercise Clause requires no more than "neutrality" and "general applicability," but also in its adoption of a particular, narrow conception of free-exercise neutrality.
That the Free Exercise Clause contains a "requirement for governmental neutrality," Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U. S. 205, 220 (1972), is hardly a novel proposition; though the term does not appear in the First Amendment, our cases have used it as shorthand to describe, at least in part, what the Clause commands. See, e. g., Jimmy Swaggart Ministries v. Board of Equalization of Cal., 493 U. S. 378, 384 (1990); Thomas v. Review Bd. of Indiana Employment Security Div., 450 U. S. 707, 717 (1981); Yoder, supra, at 220; Committee for Public Ed. & Religious Liberty v. Nyquist, 413 U. S. 756, 792-793 (1973); School Dist. of Abington v. Schempp, 374 U. S. 203, 222 (1963); see also McDaniel v. Paty, 435 U. S. 618, 627-629 (1978) (plurality opinion) (invalidating a nonneutral law without using the term). Nor is there anything unusual about the notion that the Free Exercise Clause requires general applicability, though the Court, until today, has not used exactly that term in stating a reason for invalidation. See Fowler v. Rhode Island, 345 U. S. 67 (1953); cf. Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Comm'r of Revenue, 460 U. S. 575, 585 (1983); Larson v. Valente, 456 U. S. 228, 245-246 (1982).1
1 A law that is not generally applicable according to the Court's definition (one that "selective[ly] impose[s] burdens only on conduct motivated by religious belief," ante, at 543) would, it seems to me, fail almost any test for neutrality. Accordingly, the cases stating that the Free Exercise
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