Atheists are prohibited from holding public office in the US states of Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
While most of these states do either say or suggest non-believers cannot hold public office, the Supreme Court ruled this unenforceable and unconstitutional in 1961.
A US map is being shared online with the claim it shows eight states that “prohibit atheists from holding public office”. The highlighted states are Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.
According to the US non-profit American Atheists, seven of these states do include in their constitutions a requirement that candidates for public office believe in a supreme being—while Pennsylvania’s constitution does not seem to include anything specifically about non-believers.
But the post is missing the crucial context that state rules about having to believe in God are not actually enforceable. The Supreme Court ruled in a 1961 case where an atheist man in Maryland attempted to become a notary public, Torcaso v. Watkins, that denying public office to a non-believer “unconstitutionally invades his freedom of belief and religion guaranteed by the First Amendment and protected by the Fourteenth Amendment from infringement by the States”.
The First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”, which Supreme Court Justice Black said meant that “no person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs”.
Moreover, Article 6 of the US Constitution also says “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”
Another case, Silverman v. Campbell, also went to the Supreme Court in 1997, which ruled that the two parts of South Carolina’s constitution that prohibit people who deny the existence of a supreme being from holding public office were “violative” of both the First Amendment and Article Six of the US Constitution. There have been other instances of people citing a requirement to believe in a supreme being to discredit those in public office perceived as non-believers.
Out of the 532 seat-holders in US Congress who were asked to identify their religion, three said they are not affiliated with a religion, one said he or she was a humanist, while 21 refused to answer, or said they didn’t know.
You can find more of our work debunking misinformation relating to the US on our website, including the satirical claim Barack Obama has been receiving royalties for Obamacare and the unevidenced claim President Donald Trump has changed US divorce law to ban 50% property share.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because these bans are not enforceable.
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