Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer
The Supreme Court ruled that Missouri violated a Lutheran church's free exercise rights by categorically barring it from a state program that reimburses nonprofits for resurfacing playgrounds with recycled tires, simply because the applicant was a church.
The decision means governments generally cannot exclude religious organizations from otherwise available public aid programs based solely on their religious identity, a limit that reaches beyond playgrounds to many kinds of government grants and services.
“the exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand.”
The Court's concluding statement on why excluding the church from the grant program was unconstitutional.
How it got here: A federal trial court dismissed the church's free exercise lawsuit, the Eighth Circuit affirmed, and the Supreme Court agreed to review the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Trinity Lutheran Church runs a preschool and daycare in Missouri whose playground has a hard gravel surface. The Center applied to a state program that reimburses nonprofits for installing rubber playground surfaces made from recycled tires. Missouri's Department of Natural Resources had a blanket policy denying such grants to any organization owned or controlled by a church, so it rejected the application even though the Center ranked fifth among 44 applicants.
The question before the Court
Could Missouri refuse to let a church-run preschool compete for a state playground-safety grant just because it was a church?
Why it matters
Religious schools, daycares, and other church-affiliated nonprofits gained a stronger legal footing to compete for neutral government aid programs — grants, reimbursements, and similar public benefits — on equal terms with secular organizations. States with constitutional provisions barring aid to churches had to reconsider policies that categorically excluded religious applicants from generally available programs.
What changes now
The case returns to the lower courts for further proceedings consistent with the Court's ruling, meaning the church's exclusion cannot stand as previously applied. Missouri had already changed its grant policy to let religious groups compete on equal terms before the decision issued. The ruling is a final merits decision, though the Court expressly limited its holding to discrimination based on religious identity in this playground-resurfacing context, leaving open how the rule applies to funding tied to religious use.
What this does not decide
The majority added a footnote saying it was deciding only a case of discrimination based on religious identity involving playground resurfacing, not addressing discrimination based on religious use of funds. Two concurring justices objected that this limitation was unclear and might be read too narrowly or too broadly in future cases.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence in part — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas joined nearly all of the majority opinion but declined to join the footnote limiting the ruling to playground-resurfacing cases. He criticized the Court's earlier decision in Locke v. Davey for permitting even mild discrimination against religion, and suggested that decision remains troubling even though it was construed narrowly here.
Concurrence in part — Justice Gorsuch
Justice Gorsuch also declined to join the limiting footnote, arguing the distinction between discriminating based on religious 'status' versus religious 'use' is unstable and does not matter under the Free Exercise Clause. He warned against reading the decision as confined to playgrounds or child-safety contexts, saying the underlying principle applies broadly.
Concurrence — Justice Breyer
Justice Breyer agreed with the outcome but emphasized the particular nature of the benefit at issue, comparing it to general government services like police and fire protection that benefit health and safety. He would have limited the ruling to that kind of public benefit and left the application of the Free Exercise Clause to other kinds of aid for another day.
Dissent — Justice Sotomayor
“The Court today profoundly changes that relationship by holding, for the first time, that the Constitution requires the government to provide public funds directly to a church.”The dissent's central objection to the majority's holding.
Justice Sotomayor argued the Court wrongly ignored that funding the church's playground would itself violate the Establishment Clause, since the playground was integrated with the church's religious mission. She contended Missouri's constitutional provision reflected a longstanding, historically rooted, and permissible choice to keep public funds out of houses of worship, and that the majority's strict-scrutiny rule broke with precedent allowing government to draw lines based on religious status.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied the principle that denying a generally available public benefit solely because of an applicant's religious identity imposes a penalty on religious exercise, triggering the strictest level of constitutional scrutiny — the toughest test in constitutional law, requiring the government to show a compelling reason and a very tightly tailored rule.
- It found Missouri's policy fit this pattern exactly: the Department disqualified the church's preschool from an otherwise available grant program solely because it was religiously affiliated, not because of anything it proposed to do with the money.
- The Court distinguished this from Locke v. Davey, a 2004 case upholding a state's refusal to fund theology degrees, explaining that Locke involved denying money for a specific religious use (training clergy) rather than excluding an applicant purely because of what it was.
- Because Missouri's policy discriminated based on religious status rather than religious use, and Washington's antiestablishment interest in not funding clergy training had no counterpart in a playground-resurfacing program, the Court held Locke did not control.
- Applying strict scrutiny, the Court concluded that Missouri's stated interest — keeping as much distance as possible from anything resembling support for religion — was not a compelling interest strong enough to justify excluding an otherwise qualified applicant from a neutral public benefit program.
- The Court therefore held the exclusion violated the Free Exercise Clause, without needing to decide the church's separate equal protection claim.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes Locke v. Davey (540 U. S. 712)
The Court said Locke involved denying money for a religious use, not exclusion based on religious identity, so it did not control here.
Reaffirms McDaniel v. Paty (435 U. S. 618)
The Court relied on this case's rule that denying a benefit solely due to religious status penalizes free exercise and needs a compelling justification.