In response to the 1990 Smith decision, Congress created an enhanced version of the Sherbert Test as a statutory, rather than constitutional, right in the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993.

However, the Supreme Court held in City of Boerne v. Flores that the law was unconstitutional because its enhanced Sherbert Test, as a purported change in constitutional rights, could not be enforced against the states.

The Supreme Court has since relied on the statutory Sherbert Test to decide several prominent cases, including Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, 573 U.S. 682 (2014), and Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal, 546 U.S. 418 (2006).

As Brennan wrote, "to condition the availability of benefits upon this appellant's willingness to violate a cardinal principle of her religious faith effectively penalizes the free exercise of her constitutional liberties."

Douglas wrote separately to explain that the issue was not the degree of injury to Sherbert, but South Carolina's denial of unemployment on the basis of her beliefs.

Harlan, in a characteristically formalist reading of the relevant law, argued that the Commission denied Sherbert unemployment based on the same reason they might any secular claimant, that she was not "available for work" because of a private decision she had made.

In response to the Smith decision, Congress passed the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to reinstate the Sherbert Test as a statutory right.

In City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997), the court found that RFRA, as applied to the states, exceeded Congress's power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Using a parliamentary procedure known as unanimous consent, both the House and the Senate re-enacted RFRA's provisions in 2000, in conjunction with adding a similar statutory test to the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).

In UDV, the court applied the statutory Sherbert Test created by RFRA and found that the conduct in question—use of a Schedule I drug in a religious ritual—was protected under the First Amendment.