All the First Amendment did was take the question of religion out of the federal jurisdiction, preventing Congress from interfering with state laws regarding the establishment of religion.You're forgetting the 14th Amendment. SCOTUS has ruled several times over that the First Amendment establishment clause was fully applicable to the state governments and local governments. See Everson v. Board of Education and Board of Education of Kiryas Joel Village School District v. Grumet.
The SCOTUS also ruled you can cut up a baby. Think for yourself. In matters of states rights vs. federal edict, it’s always good practice to ask “would the states have signed it if they knew it would be interpreted that way”.
The First Amendment actually reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …The First Amendment is the only one which clearly limits its reach to Congress. In Everson v. Board of Education the Supreme Court actually referred back to Muddock v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in its claim that the First Amendment was made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth. The reasoning of the Court in Muddock is specious. No attempt was made to show how "Congress" somehow mutated into "states". It just makes a broad statement:
The First Amendment, which the Fourteenth makes applicable to the states, declares that 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ....'The reasoning of the Court however can be found in how it addresses the question of taxation in regard to religious freedom:
It may be said, however, that ours is a too narrow, technical and legalistic approach to the problem of state taxation of the activities of church and press; that we should look not to the expressed or historical meaning of the First Amendment but to the broad principles of free speech and free exercise of religion which pervade our national way of life. It may be that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees these principles rather than the more definite concept expressed in the First Amendment. This would mean that as a Court, we should determine what sort of liberty it is that the due process clause of [319 U.S. 105, 129] the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees against state restrictions on speech and church.This search for broad meaning rather than what the Constitution actually says is gate through which the Philosopher-Kings of the Court have marched in order to impose what they think is good government and turned what was suppose to be a limited federal government to the all-powerful monster we have today. Stare decisis be damned. It is time that these bogus rulings of the Court be challenged and overturned.