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TRINITY LUTHERAN CHURCH OF COLUMBIA, INC. v.
COMER 
Syllabus
 

benefit on account of religion.  The District Court likened the case be-
fore  it  to  Locke  v.  Davey,  540  U. S.  712,  where  this  Court  upheld 
against  a  free  exercise  challenge  a  State’s  decision  not  to  fund  de-
grees  in  devotional  theology  as  part  of  a  scholarship  program.    The 
District Court held that the Free Exercise Clause did not require the 
State to make funds available under the Scrap Tire Program to Trini-
ty  Lutheran.    A  divided  panel  of  the  Eighth  Circuit  affirmed.    The 
fact that the State could award a scrap tire grant to Trinity Lutheran
without  running  afoul  of  the  Establishment  Clause  of  the  Federal 
Constitution,  the  court  ruled,  did  not  mean  that  the  Free  Exercise 
Clause  compelled  the  State  to  disregard  the  broader  antiestablish-
ment principle reflected in its own Constitution. 

Held: The  Department’s  policy  violated  the  rights  of  Trinity  Lutheran 
under the Free Exercise Clause of the First  Amendment by denying
the Church an otherwise available public benefit on account of its re-
ligious status.  Pp. 6–15.

(a) This  Court  has  repeatedly  confirmed  that  denying  a  generally 
available  benefit  solely  on  account  of  religious  identity  imposes  a
penalty  on  the  free  exercise  of  religion.    Thus,  in  McDaniel  v.  Paty, 
435 U. S. 618, the Court struck down a Tennessee statute disqualify-
ing  ministers  from  serving  as  delegates  to  the  State’s  constitutional
convention.    A  plurality  recognized  that  such  a  law  discriminated 
against McDaniel by denying him a benefit solely because of his “sta-
tus as a ‘minister.’ ”  Id., at 627.  In recent years, when rejecting free 
exercise challenges to neutral laws of general applicability, the Court 
has been careful to distinguish such laws  from those that  single out 
the  religious  for  disfavored  treatment.    See,  e.g.,  Lyng  v.  Northwest 
Indian  Cemetery  Protective  Assn.,  485  U. S.  439;  Employment  Div., 
Dept.  of  Human  Resources  of  Ore.  v.  Smith,  494  U. S.  872;  and 
Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U. S. 520.  It has 
remained  a  fundamental  principle  of  this  Court’s  free  exercise  juris-
prudence  that  laws  imposing  “special  disabilities  on  the  basis  of  .  .  .
religious status” trigger  the strictest scrutiny.  Id., at 533.  Pp. 6–9.

(b) The Department’s policy expressly discriminates against other-
wise  eligible  recipients  by  disqualifying  them  from  a  public  benefit 
solely  because  of  their  religious  character.    Like  the  disqualification 
statute  in  McDaniel,  the  Department’s  policy  puts  Trinity  Lutheran 
to a choice: It may participate in an otherwise available benefit pro-
gram or remain a religious institution.  When the State conditions a 
benefit in this way, McDaniel says plainly that the State has imposed 
a  penalty  on  the  free  exercise  of  religion  that  must  withstand  the 
most exacting scrutiny.  435 U. S., at 626, 628. 

The Department contends that simply declining to allocate to Trin-
ity  Lutheran  a  subsidy  the  State  had  no  obligation  to  provide  does