Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1195_g314.pdf
Page Number: 50.0

Cite as:  591 U. S. ____ (2020) 

3 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

could  be  used  to  “subsidiz[e]  the  sectarian  school’s  educa-
tional program” and thereby “strengthen . . . religious edu-
cation.”  393 Mont. 446, 466, 467, 435 P. 3d 603, 613, 614 
(2018).  Meanwhile,  Ms.  Espinoza  admits  that  she  would 
like to use scholarship funds to enable her daughters to be
taught  in  school  the  “same  Christian  values”  they  are
taught at home.  App. to Pet. for Cert. 152.  Finally, in its
briefing  before  this  Court,  Montana  has  represented  that
its Constitution focuses on preventing the use of tax credits
to subsidize religious activity. 

Not only is the record replete with discussion of activities, 
uses, and conduct, any jurisprudence grounded on a status-
use distinction seems destined to yield more questions than 
answers.  Does Montana seek to prevent religious parents
and schools from participating in a public benefits program
(status)?  Or does the State aim to bar public benefits from 
being  employed  to  support  religious  education  (use)?
Maybe it’s possible to describe what happened here as sta-
tus-based discrimination.  But it seems equally, and maybe 
more, natural to say that the State’s discrimination focused 
on  what  religious  parents  and  schools  do—teach  religion.
Nor are the line-drawing challenges here unique; they have 
arisen  before  and  will  again.    See  Trinity  Lutheran,  582 
U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 1–2) (opinion of GORSUCH, J.).
Most importantly, though, it is not as if the First Amend-
ment cares.  The Constitution forbids laws that prohibit the 
free exercise of religion.  That guarantee protects not just 
the right to be a religious person, holding beliefs inwardly 
and secretly; it also protects the right to act on those beliefs 
outwardly  and  publicly.    At  the  time  of  the  First  Amend-
ment’s  adoption,  the  word  “exercise”  meant  (much  as  it 
means today) some “[l]abour of the body,” a “[u]se,” as in the 
“actual  application  of  any  thing,”  or  a  “[p]ractice,”  as  in
some “outward performance.”  1 S. Johnson, A Dictionary of 
the English Language (4th ed. 1773); see also ibid. (5th ed. 
1784).  By speaking of a right to “free exercise,” rather than