Religious liberty’s big week at the Supreme Court

Last week, in one of the Supreme Court’s major rulings about the meaning of religious freedom and the separation of church and state, Justice Samuel Alito wrote a passionate account of the ugly anti-Catholic animus that once animated the country’s education policies.

At issue in the first of three end-of-term rulings – each hailed by religious conservatives as an important victory for the cause of religious liberty, and decried by critics as allowing religious Americans to infringe on the rights of others – was the state of Montana’s no-aid provision, or so-called Blaine amendment. Such provisions, long enshrined in 37 state constitutions, restrict public funding from religious establishments and, proponents say, maintain a careful “wall of separation” between church and state.

In Espinoza v. Montana, Justice Alito described how the nation’s Blaine amendments were rooted in 19th- and 20th-century Protestant bigotry and a central part of efforts to stave off “sectarian” Catholic schools and their

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