In my last blog post, I expressed my opinion that the Supreme Court has lost its credibility and that it has become an instrument of Republican policy, specifically the insidious ways it is working toward establishing a state religion which is expressly prohibited by the Constitution.  In that post I included the disclaimer that I am not a legal scholar.  Today’s blog post is an extract from the New York Times column by Linda Greenhouse who teaches at Yale Law School and is a legal scholar.  She agrees with my position.

“Nor was there any crossover (Republican judges voting with Democratic judges) in the Town of Greece decision earlier this month, authorizing sectarian invocations at local government meetings. Opening the doors to greater public expression and observance of religion is another central part of the Roberts court’s project. Here, the court has moved a bit more slowly. Three years ago, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit invalidated the practice of public prayer at county board meetings in Forsyth County, N.C. Local clergy members were offering prayers that just happened to be laden with Christian references. The Supreme Court declined to hear the county’s appeal.

But the pause was just temporary. The Town of Greece case didn’t differ from the North Carolina case in any meaningful way. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had found the steady diet of Christian prayer at town board meetings to be an unconstitutional establishment of religion. This time, the justices agreed to hear the appeal. Since it was obvious that the majority’s goal was to overturn the Second Circuit’s decision, it was no great surprise that the 5-to-4 opinion did so.

But Justice Kennedy’s opinion for the court was startling nonetheless for its obliviousness to the impact that sectarian prayers can have on those citizens for whom prayer before a government meeting is not “a benign acknowledgment of religion’s role in society” (to quote the opinion) but an affront. “Adults often encounter speech they find disagreeable,” Justice Kennedy said dismissively. This from a justice who in his majority opinion in a Florida death penalty case on Tuesday emphasized the right of a convicted murderer to be treated with “dignity” by having his intellectual deficit assessed meaningfully rather than mechanically. The Constitution’s “protection of dignity reflects the Nation we have been, the Nation we are, and the Nation we aspire to be,” Justice Kennedy wrote on Tuesday, overturning a death sentence. I was left to wonder about the dignity of the two women who sued Greece, N.Y., on the claim that the price of conducting their business with the town board should not include having to listen to Christian prayers.

The country didn’t need to have the religious culture wars reignited, but thanks to the court, that’s where we now are. Alliance Defending Freedom, the Christian-right group that represented the victorious town, has taken out newspaper ads praising the decision’s “far-reaching implications” and offering its “model prayer policy” that people can press on their local governments. The Supreme Court’s “O.K. to pray” is being quickly and unsubtly turned into a right to pray. The Alliance’s reference to a “long-standing, important tradition of public prayer” isn’t accurate, at least as to its client; the Greece town board observed only a moment of silent prayer until 1999, when for unexplained reasons, the board started inviting local ministers to pray out loud.”

To read her whole column go to   http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/29/opinion/greenhouse-polar-vision.html?ref=opinion