The Sotomayor Decision: What it could mean for Church State Separation

I don't really have much to say about this that hasn't been said elsewhere.

Church-State separation: fuzzy. I accept the Supreme Court's ruling from several years ago regarding the Ten Commandments displays: it's important to understand the difference between a threat and the "mere shadow of a threat," and because I'm definitely not in favor of ripping old monuments out of their sites, I can respect the role of historical context in the Supreme Court's decision then. However, Justice Sotomayor's views on the many contested questions about the implications of a wall of separation are largely unknown with only a few tantalizing clues. Most of this is quite positive, but the 1993 case involving religious displays in public parks worries me. I can understand a temporary display for a holiday, and I would have no problem if a protester in a public park brought a sign with a religious message or symbol for the day. However the establishment of permanent monuments in public parks- monuments that presumably would require maintenance at the expense of tax payers- does seem to run counter to the Glassroth v. Moore decision of 2003. However the First Amendment Center's brief on Sotomayor doesn't go into enough detail, so if one is unfamiliar with Judaism it's easy to get the wrong idea: it's likely that this only would have been a temporary display, not a permanent monument, as the Menorrah is a seasonal symbol of the Jewish holiday of Hannukah. Her decision to strike down an ordinance against religious displays in public parks on the basis that the parks should be areas of free and open exchange of ideas does not show a preference for government endorsement of belief over non-belief.

The brief from the First Amendment Center wisely advises not to draw any hasty conclusions from the decisions it lists, but that brief really only details a particular kind of case involving church-state separation. Church-State separation is much broader than religious displays, broader than the first amendment, even. While reproductive rights are not a first amednment issue per se, when the government endorses a pro-life moral dictate on a population that includes pro-life and pro-choice individuals or defines domestic partnership differently for gay and straight couples rather than allowing for a pluralistic framework, and said moral dictate is religious, that is contrary to the spirit of the law. It is here that we may have reason to worry.

She's the 6th Catholic on the court, which I know some might considering a reason to be worried. To be fair, no religious test is supposed to be required for public office in this country, in practice this does happen and in several states it is still in the lawbooks that no citizen can hold public office who does not affirm the existence of God. Six Catholics on the Supreme Court is a bit extreme, and the loss of Justice Souter combined with the public's lack of knowledge on her opinions regarding abortion rights and gay marriage- is disturbing, prompting some to question if, in his push to please the moderates, Obama is neglecting his own pluralism by making the Supreme Court even more conservative.

Just what we needed, right? This after the news from California. I'm getting pessimistic.