Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/16pdf/15-577_khlp.pdf
Page Number: 47.0

Cite as:  582 U. S. ____ (2017) 

21 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

see  also  Tr.  of  Oral  Arg.  33–35.    Article  I,  §7,  thus  stops
Missouri only from funding specific entities, ones that set 
and  enforce  religious  doctrine  for  their  adherents.    These 
are the entities that most acutely raise the establishment 
and  free  exercise  concerns  that  arise  when  public  funds 
flow to religion.

Missouri  has  recognized  the  simple  truth  that,  even
absent an  Establishment Clause violation, the transfer of 
public funds to houses of worship raises concerns that sit 
exactly  between  the  Religion  Clauses.    To  avoid  those 
concerns,  and  only  those  concerns,  it  has  prohibited  such
funding.  In doing so, it made the same choice made by the
earliest States centuries ago and many other States in the
years since.  The Constitution permits this choice. 

3 

In the Court’s view, none of this matters.  It focuses on 
one aspect of Missouri’s Article I, §7, to the exclusion of all
else: that it denies funding to a house of worship, here the
Church, “simply because of what it [i]s—a church.”  Ante, 
at  12.  The  Court  describes  this  as  a  constitutionally  im-
permissible  line  based  on  religious  “status”  that  requires 
strict scrutiny.  Its rule is out of step with our precedents
in this area, and wrong on its own terms. 

The Constitution creates specific rules that control how 
the government may interact with religious entities.  And 
so  of  course  a  government  may  act  based  on  a  religious 
entity’s “status” as such.  It is that very status that impli-
cates  the  interests  protected  by  the  Religion  Clauses.
Sometimes  a  religious  entity’s  unique  status  requires  the 
government to act.  See Hosanna-Tabor, 565 U. S., at 188– 
190.  Other  times,  it  merely  permits  the  government  to 
act.  See  Part  III–A,  supra.  In  all  cases,  the  dispositive
issue is not whether religious “status” matters—it does, or
the  Religion  Clauses  would  not  be  at  issue—but  whether 
the government must, or may, act on that basis.