Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/19pdf/18-1195_g314.pdf
Page Number: 11.0

8 

ESPINOZA v. MONTANA DEPT. OF REVENUE 

Opinion of the Court 

The Free Exercise Clause, which applies to the States un-
der the Fourteenth Amendment, “protects religious observ-
ers against unequal treatment” and against “laws that im-
pose  special  disabilities  on  the  basis  of  religious  status.” 
Trinity Lutheran, 582 U. S., at ___, ___ (slip op., at 6, 9) (in-
ternal quotation marks and alterations omitted); see Cant-
well v. Connecticut, 310 U. S. 296, 303 (1940).  Those “basic 
principle[s ]” have long guided this Court.  Trinity Lutheran, 
582 U. S., at ___–___ (slip op., at 6–9).  See, e.g., Everson v. 
Board of Ed. of Ewing, 330 U. S. 1, 16 (1947) (a State “can-
not  exclude  individual  Catholics,  Lutherans,  Mohammed-
ans, Baptists, Jews, Methodists, Non-believers, Presbyteri-
ans,  or  the  members  of  any  other  faith,  because  of  their 
faith, or lack of it, from receiving the benefits of public wel-
fare legislation”); Lyng v. Northwest Indian Cemetery Pro-
tective Assn., 485 U. S. 439, 449 (1988) (the Free Exercise 
Clause protects against laws that “penalize religious activ-
ity by denying any person an equal share of the rights, ben-
efits, and privileges enjoyed by other citizens”). 
  Most recently, Trinity Lutheran distilled these and other 
decisions to the same effect into the “unremarkable” conclu-
sion that disqualifying otherwise eligible recipients from a
public  benefit  “solely  because  of  their  religious  character”
imposes “a penalty on the free exercise of religion that trig-
gers the most exacting scrutiny.”  582 U. S., at ___–___ (slip 
op., at 9–10).  In Trinity Lutheran, Missouri provided grants
to  help  nonprofit  organizations  pay  for  playground  resur-
facing,  but  a  state  policy  disqualified  any  organization
“owned or controlled by a church, sect, or other religious en-
tity.”  Id., at ___ (slip op., at 2).  Because of that policy, an 

—————— 
pressly declined to reach any federal issue.”  Post, at 6 (dissenting opin-
ion).  Not so.  As noted, supra, at 5, the Montana Supreme Court recog-
nized that certain applications of the no-aid provision could “violate the 
Free Exercise Clause.”  393 Mont. 446, 468, 435 P. 3d 603, 614 (2018). 
But the Court expressly concluded that “this is not one of those cases.” 
Ibid.