The Supreme Court ruled on Monday states can no longer lock religious organizations out when distributing grant funding for state programs. In what is sure to be a landmark case, the Supreme Court said the state of Missouri’s decision to bar the Trinity Lutheran Church from receiving funds in a state program that reimbursed nonprofits for resurfacing their playgrounds with recycled rubber tires was wrong.
Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources received the church’s application for reimbursement under the program and rejected it in reliance on the state constitution, which says in part that “no money shall ever be taken from the public treasury, directly or indirectly, in aid of any church, sect or denomination of religion.”
By a 7-2 vote, the Court departed from a long line of cases and said that as long as the money is designated for nonreligious purposes, a church cannot be subjected to unequal treatment simply because it is a church.
“The free Exercise Clause ‘protects religious observers against unequal treatment’ and subjects to the strictest scrutiny laws that target the religious for ‘special disabilities’ based on their religious status,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
“Applying that basic principle, this court has repeatedly confirmed that denying a generally available benefit solely on account of religious identity imposes a penalty on the free exercise of religion that cannot be justified . . .’”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion and was joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In it she reminded the other 7 justices that the court’s decision “profoundly changes” the relationship between church and state by holding for the first time that the Constitution requires the government to provide public funds directly to a church.
“Its decision slights both our precedents and our history, and its reasoning weakens this country’s longstanding commitment to a separation of church and state beneficial to both,” she said.
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