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Supreme Court Rules for Fair Play in Trinity Lutheran Religious Freedom Case
In a case decided today at the United States Supreme Court, a church-run Missouri preschool asked a simple question: should religious groups have the same opportunity as secular groups to participate in generally-available public benefits?
The 7-2 decision in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer today, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, said that the state may not target religious groups for inequitable treatment on the basis of religion when it comes to public program participation.
Trinity Lutheran Church, represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, didn’t ask for special treatment. They asked for equal treatment for people of faith. And the Court agreed that the government cannot to discriminate against people of faith by treating them unequally.
Trinity Lutheran was rejected from a state program that reimburses non-profit organizations who purchase rubberized surface material made from tire scraps for children’s playgrounds. The preschool was denied the grant for its playground because the playground belongs to a religious organization.
Every person in Missouri – including people of faith – is required to pay a fee on every tire purchase and these fees fund the grant program. However, the state of Missouri excluded Trinity Lutheran, which was exceedingly well-qualified according to the program’s criteria, from participating in the grant program solely and explicitly on the basis of its religious status. In other words, religious people are forced to put money into the pool, but the playgrounds at their religious organizations wouldn’t be able to benefit from it.
The Supreme Court rejected the state’s discriminatory treatment of Trinity Lutheran.
Chief Justice Roberts writing for the majority:
Trinity Lutheran is not claiming any entitlement to a subsidy. It instead asserts a right to participate in a government benefit program without having to disavow its religious character. The ‘imposition of such a condition upon even a gratuitous benefit inevitably deter[s] or discourage[s] the exercise of First Amendment rights.’
And:
The Missouri Department of Natural Resources has not subjected anyone to chains or torture on account of religion. And the result of the State’s 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.
And it did not stand.
Published in Law
As much as I think this ruling is a no brainer, I suspect the reason this went all the way to the Supremes is because of their previous inability to lay down clear guidelines at the intersection of government and religion.
Good news. Thank you.
That’s great news. That is why a conservative SCOTUS is so important. Now this was a solid 7-2 win, but there are a lot of 5-4 decisions that a Hillary appointed judge would swing the decision to the left. Thank God Trump won.
Sotomayor and Ginsberg rehashed the old kneejerk liberal position that has been consistently rejected, namely that no matter the context, scope or purpose of a program, religious groups are supposed to to be denied the benefit of government funds or assistance. It is as if it would presumptively violate the Establishment Clause if publicly funded firemen pull kids from a burning parochial school or if a publicly funded police force deploys units to protect a synagogue from neo-Nazi vandals, or a if veteran attended Notre Dame on the GI Bill.
The leftist impulse has always been to drive religion from the public square into walled-off enclaves that do not disrupt the promulgation of the Narrative. The kneejerk interpretation of the Establishment clause was to be a major weapon to achieve that.
The leftists try to sell the notion that the law has always required radical separation (hostility) but the Supreme Court has almost always had a more common sense, inclusive disposition, See, Bradfield v. Roberts, 175 U.S. 291 (1899) (OK for DC commissioners to pay nuns to provide hospital and medical services to the poor).
Boy, the Court’s on a roll. SO MUCH WINNING. :)
This is G. R. E. A. T.
What I can’t stand is when people are happy when a decision obviously benefits them immediately, then change their tune on realization that the ruling applies to all faiths, not just those that share a specific viewpoint or perspective.
So everyone lets all plan right now to shut up and no whining.
You don’t have to be religious to like this ruling. You just have to like liberty.
Agreed.
This is the first significant case that I’ve seen involving Justice Gorsuch. Interestingly, he and Justice Thomas agreed completely, joining in each other’s concurring opinions. This may be a first hint that Gorsuch may be more like a new Thomas than like a new Scalia. Of course, it’s entirely possible that Scalia would have taken the same approach as Thomas and Gorsuch.
The Gorsuch-Thomas view was even more protective of religion than the (excellent) majority opinion by the Chief Justice.
Also interestingly, while Justice Breyer joined in the Chief’s opinion, he wrote a separate concurrence construing it narrowly. Justice Kagan, who also joined in the Chief’s opinion, did not join in Breyer’s concurrence, suggesting a 6-3 majority for a broader reading of the majority opinion.
Any way you slice it, this is good news!
It’s also good to see the Forces of Hate and Bigotry take a loss.
The Washington Post headlines an article about this news as follows: The Supreme Court sided with Trinity Lutheran Church. Here’s why that matters.
That’s a serious accusation for the headline writer to be making, and it’s not substantiated by the article itself.