I understand that there may be some room to "play between the joints" when it comes to the clauses in question, but in reviewing Trinity Lutheran Church's petition to the Supreme Court, I keep banging my head against the religious practice involving the playground that falls into the gap between the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause in the question presented before the Court.
The question before the Court is the following: "Whether the exclusion of churches from an otherwise neutral and secular aid program violates the Free Exercise and Equal Protection Clauses when the state has no valid Establishment Clause concern." Putting the Equal Protection segment aside for a moment and focusing on the Free Exercise Clause part - I'm assuming that by "free exercise" the church is asserting a right to, put it obviously, exercise its religion and it is somehow being prevented by the state from doing so. Then I see the "no valid Establishment Clause concern" meaning that it is somehow more secular than the "Free Exercise" part of the question would seem to indicate. I suspect that there is probably some kind of argument that these two clauses referenced in its question are parallel tracks that never meet in this case, but I can't help but wondering about this question: ***Is the church arguing that it has a religious practice that is being infringed upon (its Free Exercise violated) that is in fact secular (no Establishment Clause violation)? Or are there "low level" religious practices like having a playground "ministry" that don't quite violate the Establishment Clause but do significantly affect the Free Exercise of Religion? Michael Peabody, Esq. ReligiousLiberty.TV (For what it's worth, I express some concern about the church's petition and what it could mean on my blog at http://religiousliberty.tv/7222.html "Faustian Bargain: Supreme Court to Decide Whether Taxpayers Must Pay for Church Playground Upgrade" ) _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
