In its last two weeks of a blockbuster term, the U.S. Supreme Court released two major First Amendment decisions dealing with religious liberty: Carson v. Makin , about whether Maine could refuse to fund religious schools, and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District , about whether a football coach could pray on the field after games. As expected, the court decided in favor of the religious claim in both cases. Together, these decisions’ legal analyses expanded religious liberty and free speech protections, while weakening the First Amendment’s establishment clause limitations which separate church and state. Some have described the invigorated conservative majority as decidedly pro-religion . More specifically, the majority can be described as being hypervigilant against religious discrimination. Not surprisingly, this dovetails with the way religious liberty has been mobilized in the culture wars. On June 21, the court released its decision in Carson v. Makin , a case dealing with Maine’s funding of free public education. In rural areas where families had no public school options, the state provided government funds for students to attend different public schools or nonsectarian private schools. The challengers argued that excluding religious private schools violated the First Amendment’s clause protecting the free […]
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