Trinity Lutheran v. Comer Supreme Court Decision

[Trev]

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that it is illegal to withhold public funding from a church on the basis that it's a church. As stated by the article, it's the first time in U.S. history that the Supreme Court said that governments must provide funding to churches.

My opinion: the implications of this are a bit more widespread than the judges might realize. Churches can request funding for any program, service, or project that they want and can't be denied on the grounds that they're a religious institution. There are still some restrictions - churches are restricted from receiving federal funding for religious purposes ("religious worship, instruction, or proselytization" - more info from different page) - but this decision is likely going to be used in favor of FBOs to lobby for more religious-friendly laws, which could be bad for groups of people that are typically persecuted by religions in this country, which could break down even more of those barriers.

What's your opinion?

 

[Nah]

The specific case in the article seems alright to me. That church was looking to use the money to fix/upgrade the playground they have on their church grounds--they weren't asking for money for religious purposes, so it doesn't exactly violate separation of church and state. I'm not sure why though they went to the state for funding though. If you're not a government/publicly owned institution, the government's not necessarily obligated to give you money, yes?

What I do hope though is that all the courts in the country hold strongly to the restriction of not giving out money to people or organizations for religious purposes. Otherwise they set a precedent that could eventually cause the destruction of the separation of church and state clause, and that's not good.

 

[Esper]

I'm sure most people who are pleased with this ruling wish it would go further, wish there was even less of a separation between church and state. That's what worries me.

I don't particularly care that some government money is going to build a playground - I'm pro-playgrounds - but it's the way this is could be used in the future to narrow the separation that really worries me. I don't want tax money going to pay for religious schools at the expense of public schools.

 

[twocows]

This was a very narrow ruling; the majority opinion explicitly stated that this was specifically a case about playground resurfacing and that the opinion shouldn't be construed to apply to other kinds of funding (although two justices didn't join on that particular point).

I agree with the ruling. If two private schools apply for grant money to resurface their playground and the only difference is that one is a church and one isn't, I see no reason why the state should withhold money from the church purely on the basis of it being a church. The idea of separation of church and state, and more broadly, secularism in general, is that the government should not favor religious institutions and that religious institutions should not have inordinate influence within the government. Neither of these principles are broken with this, it's simply the government treating the church like it would any other organization in the same position and I think that's exactly how it should work.

 

[Somewhere_]

As long as the money isnt being used for religious purposes, than I'm cool with the ruling. However, I hope that this ruling does not further justify taxing churches. Separation of church and state is a very good thing and it goes both ways.