Torcaso v. Watkins

Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488, was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court reaffirmed that the United States Constitution prohibits states and the federal government from requiring any kind of religious test for public office, in this case as a notary public.

Background

In the early 1960s, the Governor of Maryland appointed Roy Torcaso as a notary public. At the time, the Constitution of Maryland required "a declaration of belief in the existence of God" for a person to hold "any office of profit or trust in this State".
Torcaso, an atheist, refused to make such a statement, and his appointment was consequently revoked. Torcaso, believing his constitutional rights to freedom of religious expression had been infringed, filed suit in a Maryland Circuit Court. The Circuit Court rejected his claim, and the Maryland Court of Appeals held that the requirement in the Maryland Constitution for a declaration of belief in God as a qualification for office was self-executing and did not require any implementing legislation to be enacted by the state legislature.
The Court of Appeals justified its decision thus:
Torcaso took the matter to the United States Supreme Court, which heard oral argument on April 24, 1961.

Decision

The Court unanimously found that Maryland's requirement for a person holding public office to state a belief in God violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.
The Court had established in Everson v. Board of Education that:
Writing for the Court in Torcaso, Justice Hugo Black cited Everson v. Board of Education and applied the Everson holding:
Rebuffing the judgment of the Maryland Court of Appeals, Justice Black added: "The fact, however, that a person is not compelled to hold public office cannot possibly be an excuse for barring him from office by state-imposed criteria forbidden by the Constitution."
The Court did not base its holding on the No Religious Test Clause of Article VI. In Footnote 1 of the opinion, Justice Black wrote:

Secular humanism as a religion

Some religious groups have argued that in Torcaso the Supreme Court "found" secular humanism to be a religion. This assertion is based on a reference, by Justice Black in footnote 11 of the Court's opinion, to court cases where organized groups of self-identified humanists, or ethicists, meeting on a regular basis to share and celebrate their beliefs, were granted religious-based tax exemptions. Religious groups such as those supporting causes such as teaching creationism in schools have seized upon Justice Black's use of the term "secular humanism" in his footnote as a "finding" that any secular or evolution-based activity is a religion under US law.