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6 

TRINITY LUTHERAN CHURCH OF COLUMBIA, INC. v.
COMER 
Opinion of the Court 

II 

The First Amendment provides, in part, that “Congress 
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,
or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  The parties agree
that  the  Establishment  Clause  of  that  Amendment  does 
not  prevent  Missouri  from  including  Trinity  Lutheran  in
the Scrap Tire Program.  That does not, however, answer 
the  question  under  the  Free  Exercise  Clause,  because  we
have recognized that there is “play in the joints” between 
what  the  Establishment  Clause  permits  and  the  Free 
Exercise  Clause  compels.  Locke,  540  U. S.,  at  718  (inter-
nal quotation marks omitted).

The Free Exercise Clause “protect[s] religious observers
against  unequal  treatment”  and  subjects  to  the  strictest
scrutiny laws that target the religious for “special disabili-
ties” based on their “religious status.”  Church of Lukumi 
Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520, 533, 542 (1993) 
(internal  quotation  marks  omitted).    Applying  that  basic 
principle,  this  Court  has  repeatedly  confirmed  that  deny-
ing  a  generally  available  benefit  solely  on  account  of  reli-
gious  identity  imposes  a  penalty  on  the  free  exercise  of 
religion  that  can  be  justified  only  by  a  state  interest  “of
the  highest  order.”  McDaniel  v.  Paty,  435  U. S.  618,  628 
(1978) (plurality opinion) (quoting Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 
U. S. 205, 215 (1972)).

In Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing, 330 U. S. 1 
(1947),  for  example,  we  upheld  against  an  Establishment 
Clause challenge a New Jersey law enabling a local school 
district to reimburse parents for the public transportation 
costs  of  sending  their  children  to  public  and  private 
schools,  including  parochial  schools.    In  the  course  of 
ruling that the Establishment Clause allowed New Jersey
to extend that public benefit to all its citizens regardless of 
their  religious  belief,  we  explained  that  a  State  “cannot 
hamper  its  citizens  in  the  free  exercise  of  their  own  reli-
gion.  Consequently,  it  cannot  exclude  individual  Catho-