"The Establishment Clause prohibits government from making adherence to a religion relevant in any way to a person's standing in the political community"
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O'Connor writes like someone tightening a bolt: no flourish, just torque. The line is a distilled constitutional ethic, and it lands because it shifts the Establishment Clause away from abstract church-state metaphysics and into the daily sociology of citizenship. The target isn't only government-sponsored prayer or a crassly sectarian law; it's the quieter harm of signaling who counts.
"Adherence" is doing heavy work. It's not belief as a private interior state, but affiliation as a public badge. By insisting that government can't make that badge "relevant in any way", O'Connor is policing status, not theology. The real subtext is her long-running concern with political outsiders: people who may have every legal right on paper yet still receive the message that they are guests in someone else's country. In her Establishment Clause jurisprudence, that message is the injury.
The phrase "standing in the political community" is also an intentional reframing. It draws on civic equality rather than religious liberty as personal exemption. You're not protected because religion is delicate; you're protected because the state can't sort citizens into first- and second-class based on spiritual membership. That's why the sentence has such modern bite in fights over religious displays, school rituals, and government language that trades in "real Americans" shorthand.
Context matters: O'Connor, often the Court's pivotal vote, was crafting a centrist principle that could restrain overt establishment without erasing religion from public life. It's a boundary line aimed at government, not believers: practice whatever you want, but don't let the state keep score.
"Adherence" is doing heavy work. It's not belief as a private interior state, but affiliation as a public badge. By insisting that government can't make that badge "relevant in any way", O'Connor is policing status, not theology. The real subtext is her long-running concern with political outsiders: people who may have every legal right on paper yet still receive the message that they are guests in someone else's country. In her Establishment Clause jurisprudence, that message is the injury.
The phrase "standing in the political community" is also an intentional reframing. It draws on civic equality rather than religious liberty as personal exemption. You're not protected because religion is delicate; you're protected because the state can't sort citizens into first- and second-class based on spiritual membership. That's why the sentence has such modern bite in fights over religious displays, school rituals, and government language that trades in "real Americans" shorthand.
Context matters: O'Connor, often the Court's pivotal vote, was crafting a centrist principle that could restrain overt establishment without erasing religion from public life. It's a boundary line aimed at government, not believers: practice whatever you want, but don't let the state keep score.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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