As pointed out by Chief Justice John Roberts in dissent, Justice Kennedy fundamentally misunderstands the Constitution’s robust protection of religious freedom:
How to Preserve Religious Freedom After Supreme Court’s Activist Decision on Marriage
By Heritage Foundation Sarah Torre——Bio and Archives--July 1, 2015
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision on Friday redefining marriage across all 50 states will likely have many serious, even unintended, consequences for the rule of law, democratic self-governance, and—in particular—religious freedom.
Before the ink was dry on the court’s activist decision, a columnist for The New York Times was already calling for the end of non-profit tax status for churches, charities, and other religious institutions. Just days earlier, the American Civil Liberties Union urged Congress to “amend” (read: gut) the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act—a commonsense, federal law that protects Americans’ free exercise of religion from unnecessary government interference and one the ACLU lobbied Congress to pass in the first place.
These calls to strip people and institutions of faith—with long-standing legal protections—are outrageous, but not unexpected. Numerous friend-of-the court briefs detailed the potential ramifications of redefining marriage for religious liberty, yet Justice Anthony Kennedy afforded just one paragraph to these considerations, writing in the majority opinion:
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