It will be very interesting to see if the USSC takes this case before a trial on the merits in the District Court.
It would be cowardly to deny cert, but CJ Roberts’ self-image will have ten tons riding on this case, and he may want to delay as long as possible.
As I’ve said before, there are titanic issues riding on the 9th Circuit opinion, issues we have been struggling with since 1947 (Everson) and certainly since 1954 (Brown) and 1962 (Engel). This has little to do with “terrorism”, and it has everything to do with who is the sovereign in this land.
The aid to parochial schools, school desegregation, and school prayer cases all represented a failure of the political branches (who are, in Constitutional theology, us) to protect and enforce their prerogatives to make the laws by which we consent to be ruled.
Once the door was opened to the courts, and especially the USSC, to be the final word on subjects that legislators who had to stand for re-election preferred not to touch, it was perfectly predictable that the scope of their “interpretations” would expand and expand and eventually gobble up all of popular sovereignty.
Very corrupt and flawed court decisions are especially destructive of the public trust in government. The obvious distrust of those wronged by the corrupt and flawed decision but also the loss by those who initially support the decision.
It is found that the distrust in the institutions of government brought about by the decision cause the wronged to ignore governmental remedy due to its subversion. The initial winners in a corrupt decision are generally later to regret the over reach as it has exposed the greater weakness.