Smith v. City of Atlantic City

Case Description

Alexander Smith is an air mask technician with the Atlantic City Fire Department in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Fire department policy prohibits beards of any length. The purported reason for the prohibition is to ensure all service members can wear protective face masks as required by their role, but Mr. Smith’s role is entirely administrative—he is not required to fight fires or wear an air mask. Mr. Smith’s faith and conscience require him to wear a short beard, in accordance with Scripture and to set a godly example for his congregation, but the fire department unconstitutionally refused to grant his request for a religious beard accommodation.

After his formal request for a religious accommodation to wear a beard was denied, he sued the City of Atlantic City in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey seeking a preliminary injunction, alleging Free Exercise Clause, Equal Protection Clause, and Title VII accommodation retaliation claims. But the court granted summary judgment for the city, mutating Groff v. DeJoy’s “substantial increased cost” standard into a “substantial non-economic cost” standard and applying rational basis rather than strict scrutiny. In April of 2024, CLS, joined by the National Association of Evangelicals, filed an amicus brief in support of Mr. Smith’s appeal arguing that the lower court applied the wrong standard and that strict scrutiny should apply.

On May 30, 2025, the Third Circuit ruled in favor of Mr. Smith’s right to wear a beard as an expression of his faith. In its decision upholding the free exercise claim, the Court held that “[r]eligious liberty is our ‘first freedom.’ . . . [T]he City’s policy, the state regulation, and the federal regulation all necessarily yield to the Constitution. . . . To apply a standard less than strict scrutiny would falsely suggest that freedom of religion is a second-class right, subject to an entirely different and weaker body of rules than the other bill of rights guarantees.”

The Court unanimously held that Mr. Smith also prevailed on his Title VII claim under Groff because the city failed to show an undue hardship given that “no Air Mask Technician has been called to engage in fire suppression for several decades.” The Court also reversed the lower court’s denial of the preliminary injunction, which means Mr. Smith can now grow a beard in accordance with his faith while continuing to serve his community.