The Supreme Court is back from a long break today, with Samuel Alito on the bench for the first time. There's a new opinion , in the hallucinogenic tea case: Justices, in their first religious freedom decision under Chief Jus…
The U.S. is seeking Supreme Court review of a Tenth Circuit case that relied on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to bar the federal government from enforcing drug laws against Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao do Vegetal. …
As noted below, the main opinion in Newdow does not address the Establishment Clause question. The three concurring opinions do, however, and all find the Pledge, with the "under God" language, constitutional. The thre…
Only one slope is slippery. Justice Breyer was concerned at oral argument, in Locke v. Davey , about the implications of deciding in favor of the college student who asserted a Free Exercise Right. (See previous post.) But what …
Principle and flexibility. The room left for state experimentation , which the Chief Justice called the “play in the joints” between the two constitutional clauses, looked quite different to Justice Scalia. From his dissent : The…
Separation of church and state prevails over the Free Exercise Clause in today's Supreme Court case, Locke v. Davey . And really, federalism won out over nationalizing rights, because this was a case where a state, in its ow…