Has the Supreme Court Gone Overboard in How It Favors Religion? [View all]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/opinion/supreme-court-religion.html

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https://archive.li/C126M

This term, the Supreme Court decided two cases involving religion: Groff v. DeJoy was a relatively low-profile case about religious accommodations at work; 303 Creative v. Elenis was a blockbuster case about the clash between religious exercise and principles of equal treatment. (The legal question was technically about speech, but religion was at the core of the dispute.)

In both cases, plaintiffs asserted religiously grounded objections to complying with longstanding and well-settled laws or rules that would otherwise apply to them. And in both, the court handed the plaintiff a resounding victory.

These cases are the latest examples of a striking long-term trend: Especially since Amy Coney Barrett became a justice in 2020, the court has taken a sledgehammer to a set of practices and compromises that have been carefully forged over decades to balance religious freedom with other important — and sometimes countervailing — principles.

The First Amendment’s establishment clause was once understood to place limits on the government’s involvement with or facilitation of religion, but those limits appear to have been smashed. This legal demolition has been accompanied by the demotion of other important principles like equality, public health and simple fairness in law, resulting in a disorienting imbalance of values in American society.

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