Religious Crusaders at the Supreme Court's Gates by Linda Greenhouse
'Conservative justices appear eager to take on a subject at the heart of the country’s culture wars.
The Supreme Court’s decision in last term’s big religion case, on the constitutionality of a Latin cross that stands 40 feet tall on public land in Bladensburg, Md., left both sides in the religion wars unsatisfied. The court’s several opinions, adding up to seven votes to keep the cross in place, disappointed the secularists who brought the lawsuit seeking to have it removed. But the narrow holding, based on the history of this particular monument, was even more frustrating to those who hoped that the court, already tilting noticeably in favor of religion in particular contexts, would go further and adopt new rules for lowering the barrier between church and state across the board.
It seemed to me then that the court was just biding its time. Newly configured with the arrivals of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh and the departure of Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court used this case as a warm-up exercise while the justices took one another’s measure on the subject that lies at the very heart of the country’s culture wars. The court would have plenty of opportunity to make its next move.
Sooner than I expected, that time has arrived. In late June, a week after issuing the decision in the cross case, the court placed another important religion case, this one ostensibly concerning the channeling of public money to religious schools, on its docket for the term that begins in October. Other cases are rapidly filling the queue of new appeals seeking the justices’ attention. None has received much notice outside the conservative religious networks propelling these cases to a court that shows every sign of being receptive. In this column, I explore some of these cases and call attention to an unusual dialogue emerging between the court’s most conservative justices and the religious right that has good reason to suppose that its moment is finally at hand.
The new case, to be argued in December, presents this question: “Does it violate the Religion Clauses or Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution to invalidate a generally available and religiously neutral student-aid program simply because the program affords students the choice of attending religious schools?”'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/opinion/supreme-court-religion.html
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