State wins religious freedom court case

The Michigan Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court order that upheld the state’s requirement that residents provide their Social Security number (SSN) when applying for a state driver’s license.

The case, Champion v Secretary of State, was brought by a man who argued that a state law requiring applicants for a driver’s license to reveal their SSN in the application process was a violation of his religious freedom because he believed that Social Security numbers were “an immediate precursor to the mark of the beast, described in the Book of Revelation at Chapter 14, verses 16-17, and Chapter 20, verse 4.” He based his argument on the Michigan state constitution, particularly Article 1 Section 4, which guarantees freedom of religious belief.

Michigan’s requirement of an SSN on the driver’s license application is made necessary by a federal law that requires the states to have a child support enforcement program in order to receive certain federal welfare funds. That act requires that all states record the SSN of “any applicant for a professional license, driver’s license, occupational license, recreational license, or marriage license.”

Michigan law originally had a religious exemption from this requirement, but that exemption was removed from the law in March 2008 by the passage of an act amending the Michigan Vehicle Code. The amended text said that the only exemption from the requirement was for those who were exempted under law from obtaining an SSN by the federal government.

The court of appeals applied strict scrutiny in this case, meaning they required that the state show a compelling interest in maintaining the regulation. In particular, that test has five key elements:

(1) whether a defendant’s belief, or conduct motivated by belief, is sincerely held; (2) whether a defendant’s belief, or conduct motivated by belief, is religious in nature; (3) whether a state regulation imposes a burden on the exercise of such belief or conduct; (4) whether a compelling state interest justifies the burden imposed upon a defendant’s belief or conduct; and (5) whether there is a less obtrusive form of regulation available to the state.

Generally speaking, when the courts apply strict scrutiny it is unlikely that the law being scrutinized will be found constitutional. In this case, however, the court upheld the law despite applying the strictest level of review available to them.

They did so because they found that despite the plaintiff’s genuinely held religious beliefs, there was “a compelling interest in the establishment of paternity, the tracking and locating of parents legally obligated to pay child support, the enforcement of support obligations, and the collection of support payments, and doing so in timely fashion, along with otherwise having in place a data-collection mechanism and network to assist in locating individuals, establishing paternity, and enforcing support obligations with respect to future births and parental responsibilities.”

The requirement that license applicants provide their SSN, the court ruled, “greatly assists in achieving these interests, and thus helps to successfully accomplish the broad compelling interest or goal of providing for the welfare of children, where a social security number can be used as an important and practical tool to collect necessary information and data for support and paternity purposes.”