Sicurella, a member of Jehovah's Witnesses, filed a petition for conscientious objector status in regards to the Selective Service of the United States Armed Forces in 1950.

[1] After they denied him Sicurella filed an appeal and the case made its way to the Supreme Court of the United States on the urging of T. Oscar Smith, the head of the Conscientious Objector Section at the Department of Justice, who had refused to grant the status to Jehovah's Witnesses who agreed with their religion's doctrine about war.

The court sided with Sicurella and determined that the Department of Justice could not assume that Congress had intended to include hypothetical theocratic wars in its requirements for conscientious objector status.

[3] He further points out that Sicurella made it clear that the weapons of his potential war would be spiritual, not carnal, and that Congress could not possibly be assumed to have included the climactic battles of Armageddon from various religious philosophies in their creation of the law.

Reed stated in his dissenting opinion that he would require Sicurella to serve because his willingness to use force in defense of "Kingdom interests" is inconsistent with his claimed opposition to war.