5 Reactions: Supreme Court Says Churches Can Participate in Gov't Aid Programs

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Tuesday, June 27, 2017

1. Alliance Defending Freedom

Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, speaks outside the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Trinity Lutheran Church in Missouri as oral arguments are heard inside in the Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer on April 19, 2017. | (Photo: The Christian Post)

The Alliance Defending Freedom, which represented Trinity Lutheran Church, celebrated the Supreme Court's ruling.

ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman, the attorney who argued the case before the high court back in April, said in a statement Monday that the decision "affirms the commonsense principle that government isn't being neutral when it treats religious organizations worse than everyone else."

"Equal treatment of a religious organization in a program that provides only secular benefits, like a partial reimbursement grant for playground surfacing, isn't a government endorsement of religion," stated Cortman.

"As the Supreme Court rightly found, unequal treatment that singles out a preschool for exclusion from such a program simply because a church runs the school is clearly unconstitutional."