During the next three years, the Supreme Court ruled against Jehovah’s Witnesses in 19 cases. Most significant was the adverse decision, in 1942, in Jones v. City of Opelika.l Rosco Jones had been convicted of engaging in distribution of literature on the streets of Opelika, Alabama, without payment of a license tax. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction and said that governments have the right to charge reasonable fees for canvassing and that such laws could not be challenged even if local authorities might arbitrarily revoke the license. This was a severe blow, because now any community, goaded by clergymen or anyone else who opposed the Witnesses, could legally exclude them and thus, the opposers might reason, stop the preaching activity of Jehovah’s Witnesses. But a strange thing happened.

The Tide Turns

In Jones v. Opelika, the very decision that was such a blow to the public ministry of Jehovah’s Witnesses, three of the justices stated that not only did they disagree with the Court majority on the case at hand but they also felt that they had helped to lay the foundation for it in the Gobitis case. “Since we joined in the opinion in the Gobitis case,” they added, “we think this is an appropriate occasion to state that we now believe that it was also wrongly decided.” Jehovah’s Witnesses took that as a cue to present the issues anew to the Court.

A Motion for Rehearing was filed in the case of Jones v. Opelika. In that motion, strong legal arguments were presented. It also firmly declared: “This Court should reckon with the paramount fact, that it is judicially dealing with servants of Almighty God.” Biblical precedents showing the implications of this were reviewed. Attention was directed to the advice given by the law teacher Gamaliel to the first-century Jewish supreme court, namely: “Do not meddle with these men, but let them alone; . . . otherwise, you may perhaps be found fighters actually against God.”—Acts 5:34-39.

At last, on May 3, 1943, in the landmark case Murdock v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,a the Supreme Court reversed its earlier decision in Jones v. Opelika. It declared that any license tax as a precondition to exercising one’s freedom of religion by distribution of religious literature is unconstitutional. This case reopened the doors of the United States to Jehovah’s Witnesses and has been appealed to as authority in hundreds of cases since then.

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Rosco Jones, whose case involving the ministry of Jehovah’s Witnesses went twice to the U.S. Supreme Court