For constitutional law enthusiasts, March Madness does not begin to touch the June jubilance, dismay, and suspense at the United States Supreme Court. People who monitor the events at the highest court in the land wait months for a brief window in June when the most controversial and far-reaching decisions are finally released to our citizenry.
The Supreme Court’s decisions matter. These judicial decrees trickle down and touch our everyday lives, activities and freedoms. The decisions impact the education of our children, parental rights, freedom of speech and thought, rights of conscience, the protection of children born and preborn, and how we operate our churches, ministries, religious schools, businesses, even our livelihoods.
For example, most Americans who receive a paycheck have tax dollars withdrawn and paid to the government. And most believers would be livid to find that their hard-earned tax dollars were going to organizations that intentionally terminate innocent lives in the womb or to the second-largest distributer of gender transition drugs. South Carolina decided those organizations, like Planned Parenthood, were not eligible for tax dollars.
Planned Parenthood sued the state, and in familiar fashion Alliance Defending Freedom came to the state’s aid. The case landed at the U.S. Supreme Court. ADF appellant attorney John Bursch, who argued his 12th case at the high court in Medina v. Planned Parenthood, winsomely defended South Carolina. The Court set the state free to make their own decisions about qualifying Medicaid providers, and as a result, the state does not have to fund Planned Parenthood. Now the funds can benefit nearly 200 other clinics in the state that actually provide health care.
In mid-June, in a landmark decision called U.S. v. Skrmetti, the court held that the state of Tennessee can protect children from what is likely the largest medical scandal and deception in our nation’s history: experimentation with dangerous gender transition drugs and genital surgery. Children in Tennessee and nearly 25 other states are now safe from this harmful practice.
This holding has ramifications far beyond medicine. A loss in this case would have opened the door for men to invade women’s privacy, safety, sports and opportunities, and it would have placed ministries in jeopardy for having the conviction that God mercifully designed His image bearers as male and female. For this we should all give thanks.
While South Carolina and Tennessee displayed the proper role of government to promote good and restrain evil, Wisconsin violated the religious freedom of the Catholic Charities Bureau. The Wisconsin Supreme Court tried to play theologian and said that the Catholic Charities Bureau’s services to the poor and needy were not religious enough to qualify for a religious exemption.
In a 9-0 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court educated the Wisconsin Supreme Court, overturning its unconstitutional conclusion that helping the poor and needy without proselytizing is not religious enough. Clearly, thousands of ministries in our country are motivated to help, serve and assist precisely because of their sincerely held religious beliefs. The Supreme Court rightly concluded that Wisconsin violated the religious free exercise of this charity.
In the state of Maryland, the Montgomery County school board relentlessly pushed its progressive gender and human sexuality agenda on pre-K and elementary students, drawing the ire of parents and the gaze of the Supreme Court in Mahmoud v. Taylor. The school board forced students to read books pushing transgender ideology suggesting that a boy could become a girl, included class assignments to name a celebrated LGBTQ activist or sex worker, and included same-sex romance. The indoctrination began with 3-year-olds.
Parents requested the school district allow students to opt out from material contradicting deeply held religious beliefs and science itself. The school board stubbornly denied their request. The Becket Fund filed a legal action against the school board for violating the parental rights to control the religious upbringing of their children, especially on highly sensitive matters concerning human sexuality.
The high court sent a resounding message in support of parental rights. Eric Baxter, who argued the case, said: “This is a historic victory for parental rights in Maryland and across America. Kids shouldn’t be forced into conversations about drag queens, pride parades or gender transitions without their parents’ permission. Today, the Court restored common sense and made clear that parents—not government—have the final say in how their children are raised.”
With this year’s Supreme Court term now ended, many of us are already thinking about next year’s religious freedom and speech battles before the court. Colorado is trying to suppress the speech of Christian counselors and will once again be hauled into the Supreme Court for their predictably unconstitutional restrictions on speech. That case, Chiles v. Salazar, will beargued this fall.
When many of our culture’s institutions have broken away from God’s loving, merciful, eternal truth and design, chaos abounds, and there is much to keep us on our knees. Let us pray for truth and common sense to prevail, and for His eventual restoration of all things.
