The church-state roller-coaster at the U.S. Supreme Court just keeps going and we’re not done yet.
The main purpose of this week’s “Crossroads” podcast (click here to tune that in) was to talk about my recent post about Chief Justice Roberts and his decision to switch sides and defend the high court’s abortion legacy. SCOTUS, on a 5-4 vote, took down a Louisiana state law that would have required doctors working in abortion facilities to have the same kind of admitting privileges at local hospitals and those who work in other specialty surgery centers.
Mainstream journalists didn’t seem interested in the personalities behind that law. To get those ordinary facts, readers had to go to religious and/or “conservative” websites. Thus, I offered this headline: “Conservative news? White GOP justice strikes down bill by black, female pro-life Democrat.” Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana, who signed the bill, is a Democrat, too.
Why did so many journalists ignore that angle? It would appear that those facts didn’t fit into the white evangelicals just love Donald Trump template. Why muddy the political waters with coverage of two Democrats — a black Baptist and a white Catholic?
Lo and behold, by the time we did the live Lutheran Public Radio show, the court had released another 5-4 decision that, at first glance, had little or nothing to do with the Louisiana abortion bill. Here’s the New York Times double-decker headline on that story:
Supreme Court Gives Religious Schools More Access to State Aid
Religious schools should have the same access to scholarships and funds as other private schools, the justices ruled, in a victory for conservatives.
Readers who have followed church-state issues will recognize a key fact that the Times team — to its credit — got into that headline: Secular and religious private schools should be treated the same.
That immediately made me wonder if the Times, and other major mainstream outlets, were going to realize that this “equal access” principle was crucial to the church-state coalition of liberals and conservatives that accomplished so much working with (wait for it) the Clinton White House.
That’s interesting, right?