Ruling permits state money for nonreligious uses

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday that churches have the same right as other charitable groups to seek state money for new playground surfaces and other nonreligious needs.

But the justices stopped short of saying whether the ruling applies to school voucher programs that use public funds to pay for private, religious schooling.

By a 7-2 vote, the justices sided with Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Missouri, which had sought a state grant to put a soft surface on its preschool playground.

Chief Justice John Roberts said for the court that the state violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment by denying a public benefit to an otherwise eligible recipient solely on account of its religious status. He called it “odious to our Constitution” to exclude the church from the grant program.

The case arose from an application the church submitted in 2012 to take part in Missouri’s scrap-tire grant program, which reimburses the cost of installing a rubberized playground surface made from recycled tires. The money comes from a fee paid by anyone who buys a new tire. The church’s application to resurface the playground for its preschool and day care ranked fifth out of 44 applicants.

But the state’s Department of Natural Resources rejected the application, pointing to the part of the state constitution that says “no money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion.”

A recycled scrap tire is not religious, the church said in its Supreme Court brief. “It is wholly secular,” the church said.

In other action Monday, the Supreme Court:

■ Let stand a lower court’s ruling that uniformly denying felons whose crimes were not serious the right to own guns violated the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, which protects the right to “keep and bear arms.”

■ Avoided ruling on whether the family of a Mexican teenager who was killed by a U.S. Border Patrol agent has the right to sue the Border Patrol, sending the case back to a lower court with instructions for further proceedings.

■ Ruled in favor of same-sex couples who complained that an Arkansas birth certificate law discriminated against them, reversing a state court’s ruling that married lesbian couples must get a court order to have both spouses listed on their children’s birth certificates.