Supreme Court Weighs State Aid to Church Programs.
'The Supreme Court seemed ready to chip away at the wall separating church and state on Wednesday, with several justices suggesting that states must sometimes provide aid to religious groups. The case concerned a Missouri program to make playgrounds safer that excluded ones affiliated with churches, but it had implications for all kinds of government aid to religious institutions.
“This is a clear burden on a constitutional right,” Justice Elena Kagan said of the exclusion in the playground program. . .
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the most consistent voice on the other side, though she seemed to be in the minority.
“They’re just saying,” she said of the state, “we don’t want to be involved with the church.”
The question in the case, Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, No. 15-577, is whether officials in Missouri were entitled to reject an application from a Lutheran church for a grant to use recycled tires to resurface a playground.
Answering that question required the justices to consider doctrinal crosscurrents, including what earlier cases have called “the play in the joints” between two clauses of the First Amendment, which bar government establishment of religion and guarantee its free exercise.
“It’s a hard issue,” Justice Kagan said. “It’s an issue in which states have their own very longstanding law. It’s an issue on which I guess I’m going to say nobody is completely sure that they have it right.”'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/us/politics/supreme-court-church-state.html?