Cite as: 521 U. S. 507 (1997)
Scalia, J., concurring in part
Apart from the early "free exercise" enactments of Colonies, States, and Territories, the dissent calls attention to those bodies', and the Continental Congress's, legislative accommodation of religious practices prior to ratification of the Bill of Rights. Post, at 557-560. This accommodation—which took place both before and after enactment of the state constitutional protections of religious liberty—suggests (according to the dissent) that "the drafters and ratifiers of the First Amendment . . . assumed courts would apply the Free Exercise Clause similarly." Post, at 560. But that legislatures sometimes (though not always) 3 found it "appropriate," post, at 559, to accommodate religious practices does not establish that accommodation was understood to be constitutionally mandated by the Free Exercise Clause. As we explained in Smith, "to say that a nondiscriminatory religious-practice exemption is permitted, or even that it is desirable, is not to say that it is constitutionally required." 494 U. S., at 890. "Values that are protected against government interference through enshrinement in the Bill of Rights are not thereby banished from the political process." Ibid.
The dissent's final source of claimed historical support consists of statements of certain of the Framers in the context of debates about proposed legislative enactments or debates over general principles (not in connection with the drafting of State or Federal Constitutions). Those statements are subject to the same objection as was the evidence about legislative accommodation: There is no reason to think they were meant to describe what was constitutionally required (and judicially enforceable), as opposed to what was thought to be legislatively or even morally desirable. Thus, for example, the pamphlet written by James Madison opposing Virginia's proposed general assessment for support of reli-3 The dissent mentions, for example, that only 7 of the 13 Colonies had exempted Quakers from military service by the mid-1700's; and that "virtually all" of the States had enacted oath exemptions by 1789. Post, at 558 (emphasis added).
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