Supreme Court Have religious zealots coopted the Supreme Court? The left seems to think so. Pieces written about its last two terms, in particular, make various versions of this claim. They’ve said the court allegedly wishes to end the separation of church and state . They’ve said the majority of justices want to give an “elevated” status to religious persons and claims, privileging them over all other principles and laws. The list goes on. But these claims fall short — a truth we can see by a fair examination of religious cases in the past two Supreme Court terms. Rather than showing an imposition of theocracy, these decisions merely try to give religious persons equal treatment and respect constitutional religious rights. This summer, one pundit declared that, with the current court, the First Amendment Establishment Clause’s “limits on the government’s involvement with or facilitation of religion … appear to have been smashed.” Wrong. The court has hardly decreed all government interaction with religion constitutionally permissible. Recent decisions, like last year’s Carson v. Makin , have sided with religious claims based on equality, not special privilege. This case, which concerned access to generally available educational funding, said that, once instituted, […]
