Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/16pdf/15-577_khlp.pdf
Page Number: 39

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

13 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

out the support of human laws, but in spite of every oppo-
sition  from  them.”    Id.,  at  83.    Compelled  support  for 
religion,  he  argued,  would  only  weaken  believers’  “confi-
dence  in  its  innate  excellence,”  strengthen  others’  “suspi-
cion  that  its  friends  are  too  conscious  of  its  fallacies  to 
trust in its own merits,” and harm the “purity and efficacy” 
of  the  supported  religion.    Ibid.  He  ended  by  deeming 
the  bill  incompatible  with  Virginia’s  guarantee  of  “ ‘free 
exercise  of  . . .  Religion  according  to  the  dictates  of  con-
science.’ ”  Id., at 84. 

Madison  contributed  one  influential  voice  to  a  larger
chorus  of  petitions  opposed  to  the  bill.  Others  included 
“the religious bodies of Baptists, Presbyterians, and Quak-
ers.”  T.  Buckley,  Church  and  State  in  Revolutionary
Virginia 1776–1787, p. 148 (1977).  Their petitions raised 
similar points.  See id., at 137–140, 148–149.  Like Madi-
son,  many  viewed  the  bill  as  a  step  toward  a  dangerous
church-state  relationship.    See  id.,  at  151.  These  voices 
against  the  bill  won  out,  and  Virginia  soon  prohibited 
religious  assessments.    See  Virginia  Act  for  Establishing 
Religious  Freedom  (Oct.  31,  1785),  in  5  The  Founders’ 
Constitution 84–85. 

This  same  debate  played  out  in  nearby  Maryland,  with
the same result.  In 1784, an assessment bill was proposed 
that  would  have  allowed  taxpayers  to  direct  payments  to
ministers  (of  sufficiently  large  churches)  or  to  the  poor. 
Non-Christians were exempt.  See Curry 155.  Controversy
over  the  bill  “eclipse[d]  in  volume  of  writing  and  bitter- 
ness  of  invective  every  other  political  dispute  since  the 
debate  over  the  question  of  independence.”    J.  Rainbolt, 
The  Struggle  To  Define  “Religious  Liberty”  in  Maryland, 
1776–85, 17 J. Church & State 443, 449 (1975).  Critics of 
the bill raised the same themes as those in Virginia: that
religion “needs not the power of rules to establish, but only
to  protect  it”;  that  financial  support  of  religion  leads  to-
ward an establishment; and that laws for such support are