Columns

The recent Supreme Court ruling in Carson v. Makin that Maine may not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program further erodes the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, which prior to John Roberts becoming Chief Justice, had been regularly interpreted to mean that the U.S. Constitution requires the separation of church and state. Since Roberts became Chief Justice in 2005, the court has ruled in favor of religious organizations in orally argued cases 83% of the time. 

If religious schools can receive tax dollars, maybe it's time for religions to pay some taxes. 

And in the latest decision favoring the protection of religious faith over concerns about government endorsement of religion, the Supreme Court ruled in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District that a school board in Washington state discriminated against a former football coach when it disciplined him for postgame prayers at midfield.  

The Establishment Clause was intended to prohibit the federal government from declaring and financially supporting a national religion, such as existed in many other countries at the time of the nation's founding. As Thomas Jefferson in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association declared that when the American people adopted the Establishment Clause they built a “wall of separation" between the church and state.