"I am particularly pleased with the precise and originalist approach of Justice Gorsuch, whose concurring opinion states that the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause does not allow for distinctions between religious status and religious use
WASHINGTON, DC - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today in favor of religious liberty in Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley and voted 7-2 that excluding the Trinity Lutheran Church from public grant program violates the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
This ruling reverses the Eighth Circuit Court's previous decision. Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion and stated that, although the state's policy "is nothing so dramatic as the denial of political office," "the exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand."
