A trio of rulings, far from ‘regressive decision-making,’ promoted equality by liberating the First Amendment’s religious liberty protections. The Supreme Court’s latest momentous term delivered major victories for religious freedom. The ability to freely exercise one’s religious beliefs is one of the most essential rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution by our Founding Fathers. It distinguishes America as a free nation. Yet many governmental institutions — from schools to cities and states — have curtailed this constitutionally-protected right by misrepresenting the First Amendment. The rulings in three cases this term, Carson v. Makin , Kennedy v. Bremerton School District , and Shurtleff v. Boston , corrected decades of misinterpretation and applied the First Amendment as originally intended. Predictably, some progressive legal scholars referred to the rulings as “ hypocrisy ” and “ regressive decision-making ” spurred by the “religious right.” But such hyperbolic characterizations minimize the problems that pervaded religious liberty jurisprudence. The decisions in these cases are indeed consequential, but only as a remedy proportionate to the issues they resolved. The First Amendment states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Otherwise known as the Free Exercise and Establishment […]
