Posted on 06/26/2017 1:10:04 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
While there are many threats to religious liberty, few are more consequential over the long term than the states ever-expanding role in private life. If the government is able to vacuum up tax dollars, create programs large and small for public benefit, and then exclude religious individuals or institutions from those programs, it has functionally created two tiers of citizenship. Secular individuals and institutions enjoy full access to the government they fund, while religious individuals and institutions find themselves funding a government that overtly discriminates against them.
Thats the issue the Supreme Court addressed today in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer. By a 72 margin, the Court held that when a state creates a neutral program for public benefit in this case a program that uses scrap tires to provide rubberized safety flooring for playgrounds it cant exclude a church from that program, even if that means state benefits flow directly to a house of worship. Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, was emphatic:
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources has not subjected anyone to chains or torture on account of religion. And the result of the States policy is nothing so dramatic as the denial of political office. The consequence is, in all likelihood, a few extra scraped knees. But the exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand.
The Courts holding secured by my friends and former colleagues at the Alliance Defending Freedom is significant for two reasons. First, it places another brick in a wall of precedent that stands for the proposition that once the state creates a neutral program one designed neither to advance nor to inhibit religious practice it cant exclude citizens or institutions from that program merely because theyre religious. Under these precedents, churches are able to worship in government buildings, religious student groups may access student activity fees to fund their campus outreach, parents may send their children to religious schools with publicly funded vouchers, and hosts of religious organizations may participate in public/private partnerships to serve our nations poorest and most vulnerable citizens. So entrenched is this precedent that it would have been a legal earthquake had the Court ruled against the church.
Second, seven of the nine justices concurred in the result of the case. This means that the principle of religious nondiscrimination in public programs has broad judicial support. Indeed, in recent years the Court has decided a number of significant religious-freedom cases unanimously or with overwhelming majorities. Yes, the Hobby Lobby case was a classically contentious 54 ruling, but other significant cases (such as Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC which kept the government out of significant church-hiring decisions and Little Sisters of the Poor) achieved consensus.
Constitutional doctrine is usually created not by a judicial grand slam but rather through a long series of singles, stolen bases, and walks. Even the biggest cases rarely come out of nowhere but are rather forecast through other, smaller decisions. This case represents judicial progress a sharp single into center field and is well worth celebrating.
There are, however, storm clouds on the horizon. Justice Sotomayor wrote a sharply worded dissent (Ruth Bader Ginsburg joined) claiming that the Courts decision profoundly changes the relationship between church and state by holding, for the first time, that the Constitution requires the government to provide public funds directly to a church. But this is overwrought. Again, given existing precedent, the profound change would have been a ruling against the church. The Court would have sanctioned outright anti-religious discrimination in areas as benign as tire-recycling and playground-resurfacing. That would have pushed Establishment Clause jurisprudence back from its trending neutrality to the outright anti-religious hostility of the most far-left judicial activists.
This case represents judicial progress and is well worth celebrating.
Moreover, the case created consensus in part because it didnt touch on the hot-button cultural conflict between religious freedom and the sexual revolution. Just before the Supreme Court announced its ruling in Trinity Lutheran, it also announced that it would hear a Christian bakers appeal in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a case that could determine whether the state can compel citizens to lend their artistic talents to celebrate events they consider to be immoral. In this case, the question is whether a Christian baker can be required to help celebrate a gay wedding. It would be surprising indeed to see anything other than a 54 decision in that case, with Justice Kennedy likely providing the swing vote.
But thats tomorrow concern. Today was a good day for religious liberty. Seven of nine justices took a hard look at a government program that explicitly discriminated on the basis of religion and rejected it out of hand. Todays message was clear. People of faith arent second-class citizens, and their churches are entitled to equal treatment under the law.
No Country that has Forced Speech is free.
I would not force a Jewish baker to write “Jesus is Messiah” on a cake.
I would not force a Muslim baker to write “Jerusalem is for the Jews” on a wedding cake.
I would not force a BLM member to write “Cops are the Best!’ on a cake, either.
I would not force anyone to write or say anything that is against his or her conscience. No matter how profoundly I disagree with them.
If Jack Phillips goes to jail because he won’t write wedding greetings for a sodomy ceremony, there is
NO
religious freedom in this country.
It's a natural outcome of Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Ping for later reference
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In 1947 Everson v Board of Education a liberal court took the words separation between church & state out of the letter and used just those words out of context. This is where the so-called separation of church & state comes from. This his been uses ever since to remove religion from everything. The court need to put those words back in the letter and look at the complete meaning
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Personally, I’d prefer to refer to the plain text of the Constitution: CONGRESS shall, nothing about the States, which rolls to the 9th/10th.
His letter, after the signing, can be referenced, but ultimately conveys NO bearing upon the 1st.
All we need is the courts pulling phrases out of every pamphlet/letter/parchment of the time to justify their personal wants.
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