The Supreme Court of the United States points to the separation of church and state

WASHINGTON, June 28 (Reuters) – The conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court has undermined the wall separating church and state in a series of new rulings, eroding American legal traditions designed to prevent government promote a particular faith.

In three decisions in the past eight weeks, the court ruled against government officials whose policies and actions were taken to avoid violating the First Amendment prohibition of the US Constitution on government support of religion, known as the “establishment clause”.

The court on Monday upheld a Washington state public high school football coach who was suspended by a local school district for refusing to stop leading Christian prayers with players on the field after games. read more

On June 21, he backed paying taxpayers for students to attend religious schools under a Maine tuition assistance program in rural areas that lack nearby public high schools. read more

On May 2, it ruled in favor of a Christian group seeking to fly a cross flag at Boston City Hall under a program designed to promote diversity and tolerance among the city’s different communities. read more

The court’s conservative justices, who have a 6-3 majority, in particular, have taken a broad view of religious rights. They also issued a decision Friday that was hailed by religious conservatives, overturning Roe v. Wade in 1973 that legalized abortion throughout the country, although that case did not involve the establishment clause.

Cornell Law School professor Michael Dorf said most of the court seems skeptical about government decision-making based on secularism.

“They view secularism, which for centuries has been the liberal world’s understanding of what it means to be neutral, as a form of discrimination against religion,” Dorf said of the conservative justices.

In Monday’s ruling, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the court’s goal was to prevent public officials from being hostile to religion as they navigate the establishment clause. Gorsuch said that “in no world can a government entity’s concerns about phantom violations justify actual violations of an individual’s First Amendment rights.” read more

‘SEPARATION WALL’

It was President Thomas Jefferson who said in an 1802 letter that the establishment clause should represent a “separation wall” between church and state. The provision prevents the government from establishing a state religion and prohibits it from favoring one faith over another.

In all three recent rulings, the court found that the government’s actions aimed at maintaining the separation of church and state had infringed separate rights to free speech or free exercise of religion also protected by the First Amendment.

But, as liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the Maine case, such an approach “takes us to a place where separation of church and state becomes a constitutional violation.”

Opinions vary on how much flexibility government officials have in allowing religious expression, whether by public employees, on public land, or by individuals during an official proceeding. Those who favor a strict separation of church and state are concerned that the Supreme Court’s historic precedents, including a 1962 ruling that banned prayer in public schools, could be jeopardized.

“It’s a whole new door that (the court) has opened to what teachers, coaches and government employees can do when it comes to proselytizing kids,” said Nick Little, legal director of the Center for Inquiry, a group that promotes secularism and science. .

Lori Windham, an attorney with the religious freedom legal group Becket, said the court’s decisions will allow people more religious expression without undermining the establishment clause.

“The separation of church and state continues in a way that protects church and state. It keeps the government from interfering with churches, but it also protects diverse religious expression,” Windham added.

Most religious rights rulings in recent years involved Christian plaintiffs. But the court also backed adherents of other religions, including a Muslim woman in 2015 who was denied a retail job because she wore a headscarf for religious reasons and a Buddhist prisoner sentenced to death in 2019 who wanted a spiritual adviser present at his execution in Texas.

The court has also sided with Christian and Jewish congregations on religious rights-based challenges to government restrictions, such as limits on public gatherings imposed as public safety measures during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nicole Stelle Garnett, a Notre Dame Law School professor who joined a brief filed with judges backing the football coach, said the court was simply making it clear that governments must treat religious people. the same way as the others.

Following Monday’s ruling, many issues related to religious conduct in schools may be re-litigated under the court’s logic that the conduct must be “coercive” to raise establishment clause concerns.

“Every classroom,” Garnett said, “is a courtroom.”

(To see a related graphic, click https://tmsnrt.rs/3njwtCD)

Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Andrew Chung; Edited by Will Dunham and Scott Malone

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