For out look at federalism and the Bill of Rights.
- Click here for the article.
North Carolina legislators made national headlines last week with a bit of high-profile religious extremism. They introduced a resolution declaring that the state has the right to declare an official religion – presumably Christianity. The bill also contended that states are “sovereign” and that federal courts cannot prevent states “from making laws respecting the establishment of religion.”
The North Carolina bill—which appears to be dead for now—was one of two big church-state blow-ups last week. In Tennessee, legislators withdrew a school voucher bill that would have allowed parents to direct taxpayer money to private schools, including Christian academies. The reason they balked: it suddenly occurred to them that the bill would also allow parents to direct tax dollars to Islamic schools.
(MORE: Where Are the Most Religious States in America in 2013?)
State assaults on the separation of church and state are nothing new. What set the North Carolina bill apart, however, is that it was an aggressive attempt to change the constitutional landscape. It made an argument that conservative lawyers have been developing for some time: that the first amendment’s Establishment Clause does not apply to the states – and that, as a result, states are allowed to favor a particular religion in a way the federal government cannot.
North Carolina’s “Rowan County, North Carolina Defense of Religion Act of 2013” came about as a response to a lawsuit by the ACLU. The civil liberties group charged that Rowan County was violating the first amendment by opening 97% of its meetings with Christian prayers. In 2011, a federal court ruled that another North Carolina’s county’s public prayers violated the first amendment.
