Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/20pdf/19-123_g3bi.pdf
Page Number: 43.0

Cite as:  593 U. S. ____ (2021) 

21 

ALITO, J., concurring in judgment
ALITO, J., concurring in judgment 

text of the Constitution (and, indeed, with his entire theory
of legal interpretation).  As he put it, “What I look for in the 
Constitution  is  precisely  what  I  look  for  in  a  statute: the 
original meaning of the text.”  A. Scalia, A Matter of Inter-
pretation 38 (1997).  See also NLRB v. Noel Canning, 573 
U. S.  513,  575–583  (2014)  (Scalia,  J.,  concurring  in  judg-
ment); Stop the Beach Renourishment, Inc. v. Florida Dept. 
of Environmental Protection, 560 U. S. 702, 722 (2010) (plu-
rality  opinion  of  Scalia,  J.);  Maryland  v.  Craig,  497  U. S. 
836, 860–861 (1990) (Scalia, J., dissenting). 

Justice Scalia’s opinion for the Court in District of Colum-
bia v. Heller, 554 U. S. 570 (2008), is a prime example of his
usual approach, and it is a model of what a reexamination 
of the Free Exercise Clause should entail.  In Heller, after 
observing that the “Constitution was written to be under-
stood  by  the  voters,”  Justice  Scalia’s  opinion  begins  by 
presuming  that  the  “words  and  phrases”  of  the  Second
Amendment  carry  “their  normal  and  ordinary  . . .  mean-
ing.”  Id., at 576 (internal quotation marks omitted).  The 
opinion  then  undertakes  a  careful  examination  of  all  the 
Amendment’s  key  terms.  It  does  not  simply  ask  whether 
its interpretation of the text is  “permissible.”  Smith, 494 
U. S., at 878. 

B 
Following the sound approach that the Court took in Hel-
ler, we should begin by considering the “normal and ordi-
nary” meaning of the text of the Free Exercise Clause: “Con-
gress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise [of 
religion].”  Most of these terms and phrases—“Congress,”27 
—————— 

27 Although the First Amendment refers to “Congress,” we have held 
that  the  Fourteenth  Amendment—which references  the  entire  “State,” 
not  just  a  legislature—makes  the  rights  protected  by  the  Amendment 
applicable to the States.  Gitlow v. New York, 268 U. S. 652 (1925); Ham-
ilton v. Regents of Univ. of Cal., 293 U. S. 245 (1934); Cantwell, 310 U. S.