SCOTUS swings fairly
The state of Missouri pushed the limits of the relentless church/state debate in this country when it denied a church day care center a grant to resurface its playground. The U.S. Supreme Court has now corrected that bit of secular overreach, ruling 7-2 that the state’s action amounted to discrimination on the basis of religion.
So score one for the kids on the monkey bars — and for the free exercise of religion.
In Trinity Lutheran v. Comer the court concluded that the state had no reason — other than the fact that the applicant was a church — to deny its early learning center a grant from a state program that helps nonprofits re-surface playgrounds with recycled tires. Trinity Lutheran was ranked fifth on a list of 44 applicants for 14 grants, but didn’t get one.
In deeming the church ineligible to participate in the program, Missouri cited its state constitutional ban on aid, direct or indirect, to religious institutions (the Massachusetts Constitution features a similar amendment).
But Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, concluded the state did not have an adequate reason, other than the church’s religious affiliation, to deny it a public benefit that is otherwise widely available. The church would have been required to “renounce its religious character” to participate in the program, he wrote, and with the exception of Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the justices agreed that is a constitutional no-no.
If the church is excluded, “The consequence is, in all likelihood, a few extra scraped knees,” Roberts wrote. “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.”
It’s worth noting that the court explicitly limited the scope of the ruling to playground resurfacing (over the objections of Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, who would have applied it more broadly). Supporters of school voucher programs — in which public funds are used to pay private school tuition, including at schools with religious affiliations — have been seeking opportunities to expand voucher programs in states with no-aid amendments, and as a result have been closely following this case.
A court may eventually apply the legal reasoning in Trinity Lutheran to vouchers, too. For now, though, we have simple affirmation that government may not force a church to renounce its religious identity to be eligible to participate in civil society.