USA TODAY US Edition

In Trinity, Supreme Court strikes church-state balance

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The Supreme Court opened a crack on Monday in the wall that separates church and state, but the justices wisely left the crack narrow and carefully calibrated.

In a 7-2 ruling, the court held that religious institutio­ns should be eligible for public funds that are generally available to other groups to carry out certain secular functions, such as keeping children safe on a playground.

Missouri had withheld grant money to resurface a playground at a church-sponsored school under a provision of the Missouri Constituti­on that bans spending public money “in aid of any church.” The court found, correctly in our view, that the ban goes too far when a church is excluded from an otherwise neutral program, amounting to a discrimina­tory penalty on the free exercise of religion.

The case began in 2012 when Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, Mo., applied to compete for the safety grant for its playground, which is open to the community during non-school hours. Although its applicatio­n ranked fifth among the 44 applicants, it was deemed ineligible, as the majority stated, because in effect “no churches need apply.” The church sued and lost in two lower courts before the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

It became the most far-reaching case in the court’s term. Near- ly 40 groups, states and localities filed friend-of-the-court briefs on either side of what was a clash over two competing First Amendment guarantees: that the government will not promote religion, and that citizens are free to practice their religion without being penalized. Where to draw the line to accommodat­e both is a tough question, with implicatio­ns for all manner of government aid to religious institutio­ns.

Monday’s ruling could affect programs in about three dozen states that have constituti­onal bans like Missouri’s. But the court majority did not go as far as some groups and localities had hoped. A broad ruling, for example, could have opened the door to using taxpayer-funded school vouchers at religious schools.

The intensity of the clash over church-state separation was obvious among the justices, even though seven of them agreed on the bottom line. In a footnote, Chief Justice John Roberts suggested that the ruling applies only to playground resurfacin­g. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas disagreed, with Gorsuch writing that discrimina­tion shouldn’t be permitted “against religious exercise” anywhere.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor joined in a strong dissent. The court’s decision, Sotomayor asserted, “weakens this country’s longstandi­ng commitment to a separation of church and state beneficial to both.”

The ruling, however, found a sensible balance to accommodat­e two key but competing goals set by the nation’s Founders. Just as churches cannot flout neutral laws that are applicable to all without regard to religion, the state cannot refuse to allow a church to compete for a neutral government benefit open to all.

As Roberts put it, while this case might affect only “a few extra scraped knees,” Trinity Lutheran’s exclusion from the program “solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constituti­on all the same, and cannot stand.”

 ?? BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI, AFP/GETTY IMAGES ?? Protest at the Supreme Court for Trinity Lutheran Church.
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI, AFP/GETTY IMAGES Protest at the Supreme Court for Trinity Lutheran Church.

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