Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/16pdf/15-577_khlp.pdf
Page Number: 52

26 

TRINITY LUTHERAN CHURCH OF COLUMBIA, INC. v.
COMER 
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting
 

Today’s  decision  discounts  centuries  of  history  and 
jeopardizes  the  government’s  ability  to  remain  secular. 
Just  three  years  ago,  this  Court  claimed  to  understand 
that, in this area of law, to “sweep away what has so long 
been settled would create new controversy and begin anew 
the  very  divisions  along  religious  lines  that  the  Estab-
lishment  Clause  seeks  to  prevent.”    Town  of  Greece  v. 
Galloway,  572  U. S.  ___,  ___  (2014)  (slip  op.,  at  8).    It 
makes  clear  today  that  this  principle  applies  only  when 
preference suits. 

IV 

The Religion Clauses of the First Amendment contain a 
promise from our government and a backstop that disables
our  government  from  breaking  it.    The  Free  Exercise 
Clause  extends  the  promise.  We  each  retain  our  inalien-
able  right  to  “the  free  exercise”  of  religion,  to  choose  for
ourselves whether to believe and how to worship.  And the 
Establishment  Clause  erects  the  backstop.    Government 
cannot,  through  the  enactment  of  a  “law  respecting  an
establishment  of  religion,”  start  us  down  the  path  to  the 
past, when this right was routinely abridged.

The  Court  today  dismantles  a  core  protection  for  reli-
gious freedom provided in these Clauses.  It holds not just
that  a  government  may  support  houses  of  worship  with
taxpayer  funds,  but  that—at  least  in  this  case  and  per-
haps  in  others,  see  ante  at  14,  n.  3—it  must  do  so  when- 
ever it decides to create a funding program.  History shows 
that  the  Religion  Clauses  separate  the  public  treasury 

—————— 

It is enough for today to explain why the Court’s decision is wrong.  The
 
error of the concurrences’ hoped-for decisions can be left for tomorrow.
 
See, for now, School Dist. of Abington Township v. Schempp, 374 U. S.
 
203,  226  (1963)  (“While  the  Free  Exercise  Clause  clearly  prohibits  the  

use  of  state  action  to  deny  the  rights  of  free  exercise  to  anyone,  it  has  

never  meant  that  a  majority  could  use  the  machinery  of  the  State  to  

practice its beliefs”).