Supreme Court’s Establishment Clause 'Misadventure' Comes to an End
- Rachel Chiu
- Jul 1, 2022
- 1 min read
Op-ed in the Washington Examiner by Committee for Justice Policy Fellow Rachel Chiu:
It’s been a great week for religious liberty. Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot exclude religious private schools and their students from tuition aid funding. On Monday, it held that the government cannot abridge an individual’s expression of faith.
Monday’s Supreme Court decision backing Coach Joseph Kennedy, who lost his job for leading students in voluntary prayer, restores the correct interpretation of the First Amendment by rejecting longstanding but faulty standards for church-state separation.
Progressives are decrying Kennedy v. Bremerton School District as another example of overreach by conservative justices in the wake of the court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. But this decision doesn’t erode the separation of church and state, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor claimed in her dissent. Rather, it clarifies the role of the Establishment Clause and affirms that the Constitution protects Americans of all faiths from government reprisal for religious expression...
