Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/21-418_i425.pdf
Page Number: 63.0

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

23 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

concurrences, and dissents by Members of the current ma-
jority to effect fundamental changes in this Court’s Religion
Clauses jurisprudence, all the while proclaiming that noth-
ing has changed at all. 

A 
This  case  involves  three  Clauses  of  the  First  Amend-
ment.  As  a  threshold  matter,  the  Court  today  proceeds
from two mistaken understandings of the way the protec-
tions these Clauses embody interact.

First,  the  Court  describes  the  Free  Exercise  and  Free 
Speech Clauses as “work[ing] in tandem” to “provid[e] over-
lapping protection for expressive religious activities,” leav-
ing religious speech “doubly protect[ed].”  Ante, at 11.  This 
narrative  noticeably  (and  improperly)  sets  the  Establish-
ment Clause to the side.  The Court is correct that certain 
expressive religious activities may fall within the ambit of
both the Free Speech Clause and the Free Exercise Clause,
but “the First Amendment protects speech and religion by
quite different mechanisms.”  Lee, 505 U. S., at 591.  The 
First Amendment protects speech “by ensuring its full ex-
pression even when the government participates.”  Ibid.  Its 
“method for protecting freedom of worship and freedom of
conscience in religious matters is quite the reverse,” how-
ever, based on the understanding that “the government is 
not a prime participant” in “religious debate or expression,” 
whereas government is the “object of some of our most im-
portant speech.”  Ibid.  Thus, as this Court has explained,
while  the  Free  Speech  Clause  has  “close  parallels  in  the 
speech  provisions  of  the  First  Amendment,”  the  First 
Amendment’s protections for religion diverge from those for 
speech  because  of  the  Establishment  Clause,  which  pro-
vides a “specific prohibition on forms of state intervention 
in religious affairs with no precise counterpart in the speech 
provisions.”  Ibid.  Therefore, while our Constitution “coun-