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374 U.S. 398 (1963)
SHERBERT
v.
VERNER ET AL., MEMBERS OF SOUTH CAROLINA EMPLOYMENT
SECURITY COMMISSION, ET AL.
No. 526. Supreme Court of United States. Argued April 24, 1963. Decided June 17, 1963. [footnotes omitted] APPEAL FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF SOUTH CAROLINA. MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court. Appellant, a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, was discharged by her South Carolina employer because she would not work on Saturday, the Sabbath Day of her faith.[1]^ When she was unable to obtain other employment because from conscientious scruples she would not take Saturday work, [2]
she filed a claim for 400 *400 unemployment
compensation benefits under the South Carolina Unemployment Compensation Act. [3] That law provides that, to be eligible for benefits, a claimant must be "able to work and...
available for work"; and, further, 401 *401 that a claimant is ineligible for benefits "[i]f... he
has failed, without good cause... to accept available suitable work when offered him by the employment office or the employer... ." The appellee Employment Security Commission, in administrative proceedings under the statute, found that appellant's restriction upon her availability for Saturday work brought her within the provision disqualifying for benefits insured workers who fail, without good cause, to accept "suitable work when offered... by the employment office or the employer.. ." The Commission's finding was sustained by the Court of Common Pleas for Spartanburg County. That court's judgment was in turn affirmed by the South Carolina Supreme Court, which rejected appellant's contention that, as applied to her, the disqualifying provisions of the South Carolina statute abridged her right to the free exercise of her religion secured under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment through the Fourteenth Amendment. The State Supreme Court held specifically that appellant's ineligibility infringed no constitutional liberties because such a construction of the statute "places no restriction upon the appellant's freedom of religion nor does it in any way prevent her in the exercise of her right and freedom to observe her religious beliefs in accordance with the dictates of her conscience." 240 S. C. 286, 303-304, 125 S. E. 2d 737, 746. [4] We noted
probable 402 *402 jurisdiction of appellant's appeal. 371 U. S. 938. We reverse the
judgment of the South Carolina Supreme Court and remand for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
I.
The door of the Free Exercise Clause stands tightly closed against any governmental regulation of religious beliefs as such, Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 303. Government may neither compel affirmation of a repugnant belief, Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U. S. 488; nor penalize or discriminate against individuals or groups because they hold religious views abhorrent to the authorities, Fowler v. Rhode Island, 345 U. S. 67; nor employ the taxing power to inhibit the dissemination of particular religious views, Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U. S. 105; Follett v. McCormick, 321 U. S. 573;
cf. Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U. S. 233. On the other hand, 403 *403 the Court
has rejected challenges under the Free Exercise Clause to governmental regulation of certain overt acts prompted by religious beliefs or principles, for "even when the action is in accord with one's religious convictions, [it] is not totally free from legislative restrictions." Braunfeld v. Brown, 366 U. S. 599, 603. The conduct or actions so regulated have invariably posed some substantial threat to public safety, peace or order. See, e. g.,Reynolds v. United States, 98 U. S. 145; Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11 ; Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U. S. 158; Cleveland v. United States, 329 U. S. 14. Plainly enough, appellant's conscientious objection to Saturday work constitutes no conduct prompted by religious principles of a kind within the reach of state legislation. If, therefore, the decision of the South Carolina Supreme Court is to withstand appellant's constitutional challenge, it must be either because her disqualification as a beneficiary represents no infringement by the State of her constitutional rights of free exercise, or because any incidental burden on the free exercise of appellant's religion may be justified by a "compelling state interest in the regulation of a subject within the State's constitutional power to regulate... ." NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 438.
II.
We turn first to the question whether the disqualification for benefits imposes any burden on the free exercise of appellant's religion. We think it is clear that it does. In a sense the consequences of such a disqualification to religious principles and practices may be only an indirect result of welfare legislation within the State's general competence to enact; it is true that no criminal sanctions directly compel appellant to work a six-day week. But this is only
the beginning, not the end, of our 404 *404 inquiry.[5]^ For "[i]f the purpose or effect of a law is
to impede the observance of one or all religions or is to discriminate invidiously between religions, that law is constitutionally invalid even though the burden may be characterized as being only indirect." Braunfeld v. Brown, supra, at 607. Here not only is it apparent that appellant's declared ineligibility for benefits derives solely from the practice of her religion, but the pressure upon her to forego that practice is unmistakable. The ruling forces her to choose between following the precepts of her religion and forfeiting benefits, on the one hand, and abandoning one of the precepts of her religion in order to accept work, on the other hand. Governmental imposition of such a choice puts the same kind of burden upon the free exercise of religion as would a fine imposed against appellant for her Saturday worship. Nor may the South Carolina court's construction of the statute be saved from constitutional infirmity on the ground that unemployment compensation benefits are not appellant's "right"
without the views of the state court. Nor, if the contention had been made below, would the record appear to sustain it; there is no proof whatever to warrant such fears of malingering or deceit as those which the respondents now advance. Even if consideration of such evidence is not foreclosed by the prohibition against judicial inquiry into the truth or falsity of religious beliefs, United States v. Ballard, 322 U. S. 78—a question as to which we intimate no view since it is not before us—it is highly doubtful whether such evidence would be sufficient to warrant a substantial infringement of religious liberties. For even if the possibility of spurious claims did threaten to dilute the fund and disrupt the scheduling of work, it would plainly be incumbent upon the appellees to demonstrate that no alternative forms of regulation would combat such abuses without infringing First Amendment rights. [7]
Cf. Shelton v. Tucker, 364 U. S. 408 *408 479, 487- 490 ; Talley v. California, 362 U.
S. 60, 64; Schneider v. State, 308 U. S. 147, 161; Martin v. Struthers, 319 U. S. 141, 144-
In these respects, then, the state interest asserted in the present case is wholly dissimilar to the interests which were found to justify the less direct burden upon religious practices in Braunfeld v. Brown, supra. The Court recognized that the Sunday closing law which that decision sustained undoubtedly served "to make the practice of [the Orthodox Jewish merchants']... religious beliefs more expensive," 366 U. S., at 605. But the statute was nevertheless saved by a countervailing factor which finds no equivalent in the instant case—a strong state interest in providing one uniform day of rest for all workers. That secular objective could be achieved, the Court found, only by declaring Sunday to be that day of rest. Requiring exemptions for Sabbatarians, while theoretically possible, appeared
to present an administrative 409 *409 problem of such magnitude, or to afford the exempted
class so great a competitive advantage, that such a requirement would have rendered the entire statutory scheme unworkable. [8] In the present case no such justifications underlie the determination of the state court that appellant's religion makes her ineligible to receive benefits.[9]
IV.
In holding as we do, plainly we are not fostering the "establishment" of the Seventh-day Adventist religion in South Carolina, for the extension of unemployment benefits to Sabbatarians in common with Sunday worshippers reflects nothing more than the governmental obligation of neutrality in the face of religious differences, and does not represent that involvement of religious with secular institutions which it is the object of the Establishment Clause to forestall. See School District of Abington Township v. Schempp, ante, p. 203. Nor does the recognition of the appellant's right to unemployment benefits under the state statute serve to abridge any other person's religious liberties. Nor do we, by our decision today, declare the existence of a constitutional right to unemployment benefits
on the part 410 *410 of all persons whose religious convictions are the cause of their
unemployment. This is not a case in which an employee's religious convictions serve to make him a nonproductive member of society. See note 2, supra. Finally, nothing we say today constrains the States to adopt any particular form or scheme of unemployment compensation. Our holding today is only that South Carolina may not constitutionally apply the eligibility provisions so as to constrain a worker to abandon his religious convictions respecting the day of rest. This holding but reaffirms a principle that we announced a decade and a half ago, namely that no State may "exclude individual Catholics, Lutherans,
Mohammedans, Baptists, Jews, Methodists, Non-believers, Presbyterians, or the members of any other faith, because of their faith, or lack of it, from receiving the benefits of public welfare legislation." Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1, 16. In view of the result we have reached under the First and Fourteenth Amendments' guarantee of free exercise of religion, we have no occasion to consider appellant's claim that the denial of benefits also deprived her of the equal protection of the laws in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. The judgment of the South Carolina Supreme Court is reversed and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion. It is so ordered. MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS, concurring. [Omitted] MR. JUSTICE STEWART, concurring in the result. [Omitted] MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, whom MR. JUSTICE WHITE joins, dissenting. Today's decision is disturbing both in its rejection of existing precedent and in its implications for the future. The significance of the decision can best be understood after an examination of the state law applied in this case. South Carolina's Unemployment Compensation Law was enacted in 1936 in response to the grave social and economic problems that arose during the depression of that period […] [….] the purpose of the legislature was to tide people over, and to avoid social and economic chaos, during periods when work was unavailable. But at the same time there was clearly no intent to provide relief for those who for purely personal reasons were or became unavailable for work [….] (Emphasis added.) The South Carolina Supreme Court has uniformly applied this law in conformity with its clearly expressed purpose. It has consistently held that one is not "available for work" if his unemployment has resulted not from the inability of industry to provide a job but rather from personal circumstances, no matter how compelling. [….] In the present case all that the state court has done is to apply these accepted principles. Since virtually all of the mills in the Spartanburg area were operating on a six-day week, the appellant was "unavailable for work," and thus ineligible for benefits, when personal
considerations 420 *420 prevented her from accepting employment on a fulltime basis in the
industry and locality in which she had worked. The fact that these personal considerations sprang from her religious convictions was wholly without relevance to the state court's application of the law. Thus in no proper sense can it be said that the State discriminated
