U.S. Supreme Court takes aim at separation of church and state - Reuters.com

Jun 28, 2022

Supreme Court has chipped away at the wall separating church and state in a series of new rulings, eroding American legal traditions intended to prevent government officials from promoting any particular faith.

The court on Monday backed 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.

The court's conservative justices, who hold a 6-3 majority, in particular have taken a broad view of religious rights.

Cornell Law School professor Michael Dorf said the court's majority appears skeptical of government decision-making premised on secularism.

In Monday's ruling, conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that the court's aim was to prevent public officials from being hostile to religion as they navigate the establishment clause.

It was President Thomas Jefferson who famously said in an 1802 letter that the establishment clause should represent a "wall of separation" between church and state.

In the three recent rulings, the court decided that government actions intended to maintain a separation of church and state had instead infringed separate rights to free speech or the free exercise of religion also protected by the First Amendment.

Opinions vary over to how much flexibility government officials have in allowing religious expression, whether by public employees, on public land or by people during an official proceeding.

Those who favor a strict separation of church and state are concerned that landmark Supreme Court precedents, including a 1962 ruling that prohibited prayer in public schools, could be imperiled.

Lori Windham, a lawyer with the religious liberty legal group Becket, said the court's decisions will allow for greater religious expression by individuals without undermining the establishment clause.

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