How Trump-empowered religious extremists are having a Supreme Court 'field day': advocate

The leader of one the nation’s largest religious-freedom groups warns “America cannot stay America” without a renewed commitment to fighting back against extremists emboldened by former President Donald Trump. Americans United for Separation of Church and State and National Women’s Law Center recently filed a lawsuit in Missouri on behalf of clergy members challenging a 2019 Missouri state law exclusively upon church-state protection provisions. It’s a strategy that apparently is emerging nationally, as Insider reports : “There have also been more than a dozen cases challenging abortion restrictions on religious freedom grounds since the Supreme Court's decision, said Elizabeth Reiner Platt, director of Columbia Law School's Law, Rights, and Religion Project. “They've got sort of a stronghold on sort of many states where they have elected representatives come together and advance this escalating agenda that's goal is to license discrimination in the name of quote, ‘religious freedom,’ close quote.” Laser says an example of how a seemingly innocent concept respecting religious liberty can become distorted is the “ministerial exception.” In theory, it’s intended to protect religious institutions from intrusion by the government in hiring and dealing with key religious employees, and specifically ministers. “They want to be able to call any employee of a religious institution from a janitor to a math teacher to a nurse in a religious hospital, a ‘minister’ — which they're not — to license discrimination in the name of religion.” Last month, Americans United for Separation of Church and State filed an appeal of a federal judge’s ruling finding the Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis could rely upon the ministerial exception to fire a high school guidance counselor for being in a same-sex marriage.