THE DISCRIMINATORY RELIGION CLAUSES.

The Supreme Court's decision in Carson v. Makin is the third in a trilogy of cases dramatically upending the meaning of the First Amendment's Religion Clauses. Beginning with Trinity Lutheran v. Comer in 2017 and followed by Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue in 2020, the Court has moved forward with an aggressive project of transforming the Religion Clauses into a broad anti-religiousdiscrimination clause. In this paper, I trace this doctrinal devolution and argue that the Court's novel reinterpretation is deeply misguided. By design, the Religion Clauses require discrimination--religion is to be treated differently from non-religion in a broad range of state action. The contemporary Supreme Court, however, has inverted this most basic insight. The Court's new Religion Clause jurisprudence is also on a collision course with its burgeoning government speech doctrine. This doctrine recognizes that in a democratic polity, every policy choice entails paths not chosen. Government must be able to select its own message, and in turn, discriminate against those messages it wishes not to communicate, tempered by accountability at the ballot box. Granted, to say that discrimination is sometimes required under the Religion Clauses and the Government Speech Doctrine is not to say discrimination against religion is always constitutional. Protections against objectionable discrimination remain as vital as ever. The Court's public forum doctrine, for example, protects free expression of religion from content-based discrimination when the government itself is not speaking. The heart of the Court's recent Religion Clause decisions, however, is a jurisprudentially backward constitutional mandate that government actively subsidize religious speech to avoid a Religion Clause "discrimination" claim. It is a command that government express ideas it may not wish to express. The Court's reimagining of the Religion Clauses is inconsistent with the First Amendment's original meaning, potentially harmful to both government and religion, and in direct tension with the Government Speech Doctrine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]