Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia Inc. v. Comer

Docket No.	Op. Below	Argument	Opinion	Vote	Author	Term
15-577	8th Cir.	Apr 19, 2017 Tr.Aud.	Jun 26, 2017	7-2	Roberts	OT 2016

Holding: The Missouri Department of Natural Resources' express policy of denying grants to any applicant owned or controlled by a church, sect or other religious entity violated the rights of Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc., under the free exercise clause of the First Amendment by denying the church an otherwise available public benefit on account of its religious status.

Judgment: Reversed and remanded, 7-2, in an opinion by Chief Justice Roberts on June 26, 2017. Chief Justice Roberts delivered the opinion of the Supreme Court, except as to Footnote 3. Justices Kennedy, Alito and Kagan joined that opinion in full, and Justices Thomas and Gorsuch joined except as to Footnote 3. Justice Thomas filed an opinion concurring in part, in which Justice Gorsuch joined. Justice Gorsuch filed an opinion concurring in part, in which Justice Thomas joined. Justice Breyer filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Justice Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justice Ginsburg joined.

SCOTUSblog Coverage

Symposium: Playground resurfacing case provides soft landing for state "no aid" provisions (Alice O'Brien)
Symposium: The justices reach broad agreement, but on a narrow question (Fred Yarger)
Symposium: The Constitution provides a level playing field for people of faith (Hillary Byrnes)
Symposium: The crumbling wall separating church and state (Erwin Chemerinsky)
Symposium: Trinity Lutheran and Zelman – Saved by footnote 3 or a dream come true for voucher advocates? (Frank Ravitch)
Symposium: Court ruling bolsters religious liberty… beyond the playground (Nathan Diament)
Symposium: Bad news from Trinity Lutheran – Only two justices support the establishment clause (Leslie Griffin)
Symposium: Putting some limits on the "play in the joints" (Erin Morrow Hawley)
A "view" from the courtroom: A day for drama on the bench (Mark Walsh)
Opinion analysis: Church prevails in funding dispute (Amy Howe)
And then there were six – the remaining cases (Amy Howe)
And then there were nine – the remaining decisions (Amy Howe)
Argument analysis: Justices leaning toward a ruling for Trinity Lutheran on the merits (Amy Howe)
Both sides urge court to go ahead in church-state case (Amy Howe)
Missouri reverses course on aid to religious organizations (UPDATED) (Amy Howe)
Argument preview: More than just a playground dispute (Amy Howe)
Court releases April calendar (Amy Howe)
Justices release March calendar (Amy Howe)
Symposium: Gay rights, religious liberty and … tire scraps? The inclusive Fourteenth Amendment path in Trinity Lutheran (Mark Rienzi)
Symposium: Religious freedom, not religious discrimination (Richard B. Katskee)
Symposium: Confronting a nativist past; protecting school-choice’s future (Rick Garnett)
Symposium: Not on the taxpayers’ dime (Daniel Mach)
Symposium: Ban on state funding of churches protects independence (K. Hollyn Hollman)
Symposium: A soft landing at the Supreme Court (Hannah Smith and Luke Goodrich)
Introduction: More than just a playground dispute (Amy Howe)

Date	Proceedings and Orders (key to color coding)
Nov 04 2015	Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due December 7, 2015)
Dec 03 2015	Consent to the filing of amicus curiae briefs, in support of either party or of neither party, received from counsel for petitioner.
Dec 07 2015	Brief amici curiae of Association of Christian Schools International, and Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod filed.
Dec 07 2015	Brief amicus curiae of The American Center for Law & Justice filed.
Dec 07 2015	Brief amici curiae of Nevada, et al. filed.
Dec 07 2015	Brief of respondent Sara Parker Pauley, Director, Missouri Department of Natural Resources in opposition filed.
Dec 07 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission filed.
Dec 07 2015	Brief amicus curiae of Foundation for Moral Law filed. (Distributed)
Dec 18 2015	Reply of petitioner Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. filed.
Dec 22 2015	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of January 8, 2016.
Jan 11 2016	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of January 15, 2016.
Jan 15 2016	Petition GRANTED.
Feb 09 2016	The time to file the joint appendix and petitioner's brief on the merits is extended to and including April 14, 2016.
Feb 09 2016	The time to file respondent's brief on the merits is extended to and including June 28, 2016.
Mar 17 2016	Consent to the filing of amicus curiae briefs, in support of either party or of neither party, received from counsel for the petitioner.
Apr 14 2016	Joint appendix filed. (Statement of costs filed.)
Apr 14 2016	Brief of petitioner Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. filed.
Apr 18 2016	Brief amicus curiae of World Vision, Inc. filed.
Apr 19 2016	Brief amicus curiae of The American Center for Law & Justice filed.
Apr 20 2016	Brief amicus curiae of The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America filed.
Apr 20 2016	Brief amicus curiae of Justice and Freedom Fund filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amicus curiae of American Jewish Committee in support of neither party filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amicus curiae of The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amicus curiae of Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amici curiae of Association of Christian Schools International, and Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amicus curiae of The Bronx Household of Faith filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amicus curiae of Institutional Religious Freedom Alliance filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amicus curiae of American Association of Christian Schools filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amici curiae of Members of Congress filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amici curiae of Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, et al. filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amicus curiae of Institute for Justice filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amici curiae of Douglas County School District, et al. filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amicus curiae of National Association of Evangelicals filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amicus curiae of Pacific Legal Foundation filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amici curiae of Nevada, et al. filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amicus curiae of The General Council of the Assemblies of God filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amicus curiae of Belmont Abbey College filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amici curiae of Law and Religion Practitioners filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amicus curiae of The Cato Institute filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amici curiae of Christian Legal Society, et al. filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amicus curiae of Colorado filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amici curiae of United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, et al. filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amici curiae of Liberty Counsel, et al. filed.
Apr 21 2016	Brief amicus curiae of WallBuilders, Inc. filed.
Jun 28 2016	Brief of respondent Sara Parker Pauley, Director, Missouri Department of Natural Resources filed.
Jul 05 2016	Brief amici curiae of American Civil Liberties Union, et al. filed.
Jul 05 2016	Brief amici curiae of Religious and Civil Rights Organizations filed.
Jul 05 2016	Brief amici curiae of Legal and Religious Historians filed.
Jul 05 2016	Brief amici curiae of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and General Synod of The United Church of Christ filed.
Jul 05 2016	Brief amicus curiae of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. filed.
Jul 05 2016	Brief amicus curiae of The National Education Association filed.
Jul 22 2016	Application (16A78) to extend the time to file a reply brief from July 28, 2016 to August 12, 2016, submitted to Justice Alito.
Jul 25 2016	Application (16A78) granted by Justice Alito extending the time to file until August 12, 2016.
Aug 12 2016	Reply of petitioner Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. filed.
Feb 17 2017	SET FOR ARGUMENT ON Wednesday, April 19, 2017.
Feb 24 2017	Record requested from the U.S.C.A. 8th Circuit.
Mar 02 2017	Record received from the U.S.C.A. 8th Circuit (1 box).
Mar 02 2017	CIRCULATED.
Apr 14 2017	Request from the Clerk that the parties submit their views on whether this case is affected by the press release relating to access to Missouri grant programs issued by Governor Greitens on April 13, 2017. The parties' views should be in the form of a letter delivered to the Court and served upon counsel by noon on Tuesday, April 18, 2017.
Apr 18 2017	Letter of petitioner pursuant to April 14, 2017 request of Clerk filed. (Distributed)
Apr 18 2017	Letter of respondent pursuant to April 14, 2017 request of Clerk filed. (Distributed)
Apr 19 2017	Argued. For petitioner: David A. Cortman, Lawrenceville, Ga. For respondent: James R. Layton, Jefferson City, Mo.
Jun 26 2017	Judgment REVERSED and case REMANDED. Roberts, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, except as to footnote 3. Kennedy, Alito, and Kagan, JJ., joined that opinion in full, and Thomas and Gorsuch, JJ., joined except as to footnote 3. Thomas, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, in which Gorsuch, J., joined. Gorsuch, J., filed an opinion concurring in part, in which Thomas, J., joined. Breyer, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. Sotomayor, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, J., joined.
Jul 28 2017	JUDGMENT ISSUED.
Aug 07 2017	Record from the U.S.C.A. for the Eight Circuit has been returned.

Featured Posts

Reargument analysis: Justices seek a “middle position” in takings litigation case – Miriam Seifter

Argument analysis: Justices have strong views about removal of class actions – Ronald Mann

Opinion analysis: Interesting 5-4 coalition holds that the ACCA reaches robberies that require force sufficient to overcome resistance (Corrected) – Rory Little
Email Digest Sign-Up
Receive a daily email digest from Feedburner by entering your email.
Merits Case Pages and Archives

Archives

or

This Week at the Court
The Supreme Court released additional orders from the January 11 conference on Monday; the justices called for the views of the U.S. solicitor general in CSX Transportation Inc. v. Alabama Department of Revenue, Alabama Department of Revenue v. CSX Transportation Inc. and Toshiba Corp. v. Automotive Industries Pension Trust Fund.
On Tuesday, the justices released their opinions in New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira and Stokeling v. United States.
On Monday, the justices heard oral argument in Thacker v. Tennessee Valley Authority and Rimini Street Inc. v. Oracle USA Inc.
On Tuesday, the justices heard oral argument in Home Depot U.S.A. Inc. v. Jackson and Azar v. Allina Health Services.
On Wednesday, the justices heard oral argument in Knick v. Township of Scott and Tennessee Wine & Spirits Retailers Association v. Blair.
On Friday, the justices meet for their January 18 conference; John Elwood's Relist Watch compiles the petitions relisted for this conference.
Recent Decisions
- New Prime Inc. v. Oliveira A court should determine whether the Federal Arbitration Act’s Section 1 exclusion for disputes involving the “contracts of employment” of certain transportation workers applies before ordering arbitration; here, truck driver Dominic Oliveira’s independent contractor operating agreement with New Prime Inc. falls within that exception.
- Stokeling v. United States The Armed Career Criminal Act’s elements clause encompasses a robbery offense that, like Florida’s law, requires the criminal to overcome the victim’s resistance.
- Culbertson v. Berryhill The Social Security Act’s fee cap of 25 percent of past-due benefits imposed on attorneys who successfully represent Title II benefit claimants in court proceedings applies only to fees for court representation and not to aggregate fees for both court and agency representation.
- Henry Schein Inc. v. Archer and White Sales Inc. The “wholly groundless” exception to the general rule that courts must enforce contracts that delegate threshold arbitrability questions to an arbitrator, not a court, is inconsistent with the Federal Arbitration Act and Supreme Court precedent.
- City of Escondido, California v. Emmons The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit failed to conduct the analysis required by Supreme Court precedents in determining whether two Escondido police officers were entitled to qualified immunity.
- Shoop v. Hill Because Danny Hill’s intellectual disability claim must be evaluated based solely on holdings of the Supreme Court that were clearly established at the time the state-court decisions were rendered, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit’s reliance on Moore v. Texas -- which was handed down much later -- was plainly improper.
see all this term’s cases »
Current Relists
- Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda Whether the prohibition in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a)(1), against employment discrimination “because of . . . sex” encompasses discrimination based on an individual’s sexual orientation.
- Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia Whether discrimination against an employee because of sexual orientation constitutes prohibited employment discrimination “because of . . . sex” within the meaning of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2.
- Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. (1) Whether a state may require health-care facilities to dispose of fetal remains in the same manner as other human remains, i.e., by burial or cremation; and (2) whether a state may prohibit abortions motivated solely by the race, sex or disability of the fetus and require abortion doctors to inform patients of the prohibition.
More Petitions »
Major Cases
- Lamone v. Benisek
  In case in which the plaintiffs allege that a Maryland congressional district was gerrymandered to retaliate against them for their political views: (1) whether the various legal claims articulated by the three-judge district court are unmanageable; (2) whether the three-judge district court erred when, in granting plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, it resolved disputes of material fact as to multiple elements of plaintiffs’ claims, failed to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and treated as “undisputed” evidence that is the subject of still-unresolved hearsay and other evidentiary objections; and (3) whether the three-judge district court abused its discretion in entering an injunction despite the plaintiffs’ years-long delay in seeking injunctive relief, rendering the remedy applicable to at most one election before the next decennial census necessitates another redistricting.
- Kisor v. Wilkie
  Whether the Supreme Court should overrule Auer v. Robbins and Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co., which direct courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation.
- Department of Commerce v. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
  Whether, in an action seeking to set aside agency action under the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 701 et seq., a district court may order discovery outside the administrative record to probe the mental processes of the agency decisionmaker—including by compelling the testimony of high-ranking Executive Branch officials—when there is no evidence that the decisionmaker disbelieved the objective reasons in the administrative record, irreversibly prejudged the issue, or acted on a legally forbidden basis.
- Rucho v. Common Cause
  (1) Whether plaintiffs have standing to press their partisan gerrymandering claims; (2) whether plaintiffs’ partisan gerrymandering claims are justiciable; and (3) whether North Carolina’s 2016 congressional map is, in fact, an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
- The American Legion v. American Humanist Association
  (1) Whether a 93-year-old memorial to the fallen of World War I is unconstitutional merely because it is shaped like a cross; (2) whether the constitutionality of a passive display incorporating religious symbolism should be assessed under the tests articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, Van Orden v. Perry, Town of Greece v. Galloway or some other test; and (3) whether, if the test from Lemon v. Kurtzman applies, the expenditure of funds for the routine upkeep and maintenance of a cross-shaped war memorial, without more, amounts to an excessive entanglement with religion in violation of the First Amendment.
- Gamble v. United States
  Whether the Supreme Court should overrule the “separate sovereigns” exception to the double jeopardy clause.
see all this term’s cases »
Recent Special Features
Statistical Snapshot

Cases argued 43

Cases decided 9

Summary reversals 2

Merits cases granted to date 73

see all »
Live Blog Archives
See all
Twitter Feed

Tweets by @SCOTUSblog

Full Calendar Submit Event

Jan. 2019

Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
		1 Holiday	2	3	4 Conference	5
6	7 Orders MERCK SHARP & DOHME CORP. V. ALBRECHT (17-290) OBDUSKEY V. MCCARTHY & HOLTHUS LLP (17-1307)	8 HERRERA V. WYOMING (17-532) FOURTH ESTATE PUBLIC BENEFIT CORP. V. WALL-STREET.COM, LLC (17-571) Opinions	9 FRANCHISE TAX BOARD OF CALIFORNIA V. HYATT (17-1299)	10	11 Conference	12
13	14 Orders THACKER V. TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY (17-1201) RIMINI STREET INC. V. ORACLE USA INC. (17-1625)	15 HOME DEPOT U.S.A. INC. V. JACKSON (17-1471) AZAR V. ALLINA HEALTH SERVICES (17-1484) Opinions	16 KNICK V. TOWNSHIP OF SCOTT, PENNSYLVANIA (17-647) TENNESSEE WINE AND SPIRITS RETAILERS ASSOCIATION V. BLAIR (18-96)	17	18 Conference	19
20	21 Holiday	22 Orders	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31

Orders/Opinions
Arguments
Conferences

Events
Holidays
Multiple

Download our App in the Apple Store
First Mondays see all
Videos see all

Justice Sotomayor at Harvard

On November 13, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and Judge Susan Carney of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit presided over the final round of the 2018 Ames Moot Court Competition at Harvard Law School.

Peabody Award
Awarded the Peabody Award for excellence in electronic media.
Sigma Delta Chi
Awarded the Sigma Delta Chi deadline reporting award for online coverage of the Affordable Care Act decision.
National Press Club Award
Awarded the National Press Club's Breaking News Award for coverage of the Affordable Care Act decision.
Silver Gavel Award
Awarded the Silver Gavel Award by the American Bar Association for fostering the American public’s understanding of the law and the legal system.
American Gavel Award
Awarded the American Gavel Award for Distinguished Reporting About the Judiciary to recognize the highest standards of reporting about courts and the justice system.
Webby Award
Awarded the Webby Award for excellence on the internet.

Cases argued	43
Cases decided	9
Summary reversals	2
Merits cases granted to date	73

Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia Inc. v. Comer

SCOTUSblog Coverage

Featured Posts

Reargument analysis: Justices seek a “middle position” in takings litigation case – Miriam Seifter

Argument analysis: Justices have strong views about removal of class actions – Ronald Mann

Opinion analysis: Interesting 5-4 coalition holds that the ACCA reaches robberies that require force sufficient to overcome resistance (Corrected) – Rory Little

Email Digest Sign-Up

Merits Case Pages and Archives

Recent Decisions

Current Relists

Conference of January 18, 2019

Major Cases

Recent Special Features

Live Blog Archives

Jan. 2019

Download our App in the Apple Store

First Mondays see all

Videos see all

Peabody Award

Sigma Delta Chi

National Press Club Award

Silver Gavel Award

American Gavel Award

Webby Award