What does a children's playground have to do with the U.S. Supreme Court? A lot, starting this fall. That's when the justices will likely consider a case of religious discrimination against Missouri's Trinity Lutheran Church. Like a lot of churches, Trinity has an adjacent playground that needed refurbishing. So, the staff applied for a state grant through Missouri's Scrap Tire Grant Program which helps reimburse groups for installing rubber safety flooring from recycled tires. In an odd twist, state officials denied Trinity's request "even though the Missouri Department of Natural Resources ranked its application fifth out of the 44 submitted."
When the church inquired as to why they were turned down, they were told the state constitution barred the "public treasury" from aiding "any church, section, or denomination of religion." That hardly seemed fair to the congregation, whose children need just as much outdoor padding as others. "A rubber playground surfaces accomplishes the state's purposes whether it cushions the fall of the pious or the profane," Alliance Defending Freedom argued in its opening brief to the U.S. Supreme Court. "The state's categorical exclusion of religious daycare centers and preschools from the [program] is discrimination based on religious status, and that violates the First Amendment," ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman told reporters. Being neutral, he went on, "doesn't mean treating religious organizations worse than everyone else."
We agree, which is why FRC filed a brief with our friends at the Christian Legal Society, the Anglican Church of North America, the Christian Medical Association, National Religious Broadcasters, and the Queens Federation of Churches asking the Court to stop the government's punishment of faith-based groups. No church should be excluded from free, fair, and equal participation in public life just because of its religious nature.
As FRC's Travis Weber explained, "At the heart of the First Amendment is the idea that Americans should be able to not just hold beliefs but follow those beliefs as they live their lives. The Free Exercise of religion, explicitly protected by the First Amendment, protects varied and robust religious expression in the public square. Certainly the Framers never meant to exclude churches from public life in the way the state of Missouri and lower courts have here." The Establishment Clause, he goes on, "was never intended to scrub all religious expression from the public square or bar organizations from receiving any benefit from the government merely because they are religious. We are merely asking for a fair and level playing field for religious and nonreligious organizations."
