PUBLIC FUNDING
Sotomayor dissents, saying ruling waters down Constitution
Justices ruled that religious institutions should be eligible to get public money for secular purposes.
The Supreme Court ruled decisively Monday that religious institutions should be eligible to receive public funds for purely secular purposes. For instance, playgrounds. The justices ruled 7-2 that Missouri stretched the constitutional separation of church and state too far by declaring a Lutheran church ineligible to receive a competitive state grant for playground resurfacing. The decision could have implications for as many as 39 states with constitutional provisions that block public funds from going to religious organizations.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the decision. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.
Even though the state’s denial of funds probably would lead only to “a few extra scraped knees,” Roberts said, “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.”
Sotomayor dissented from the bench, something justices rarely do. The high court, she said, “has never required a state to turn over taxpayer funds to a house of worship.”
“Today’s decision discounts centuries of history and jeopardizes the government’s ability to remain secular,” Sotomayor wrote in her 27-page dissent, almost twice the length of Roberts’ opinion. She warned that the ruling “leads us ... to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a con- stitutional commitment.”
The church-state showdown was perhaps the marquee case in a lackluster Supreme Court term dominated by the search for a ninth justice rather than landmark jurisprudence. Finally bolstered by the confirmation of Justice Neil Gorsuch in April, 14 months after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, the court clearly sided with the church during oral argument.
“It does seem as though ... this is a clear burden on a constitutional right,” liberal Justice Elena Kagan said then, in reference to the state’s refusal to treat Trinity Lutheran Church equally to other non-profit groups seeking state grants. The church met all the neutral criteria for the program.
Gorsuch and Justice Clarence Thomas would have gone further than Roberts, who added a footnote to the court’s decision specifying that “we do not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination.” Even Roberts dissented from his own footnote, apparently added as a concession to win the support of other justices, including Anthony Kennedy and Elena Kagan.
Gorsuch, fast becoming one of the court’s most conservative voices and prolific writers, said, “The general principles here do not permit discrimination against religious exercise — whether on the playground or anywhere else.”
The case dates back to 2012, when the Columbia, Mo., church applied for a state grant to replace the unforgiving, pea-gravel surface of its child learning center’s playground with material made from recycled tires. It placed fifth among 44 applicants, 14 of which were awarded grants, but the church was passed over based on a provision in the state constitution.
The church’s lawsuit soon became a cause célèbre among supporters of religious freedom, led by Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Trinity Lutheran in court.
It lost at the federal district and appellate court levels, but the Supreme Court’s decision in January 2016 to hear the case was seen as a positive sign.
Then Scalia died the following month, prompting the justices to delay hearing the case — presumably because they feared a 4-4 deadlock.