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This is an outrage. #SCOTUS just reversed an Eleventh Circuit decision blocking an execution where the inmate, a Muslim, wanted an imam rather than a Christian chaplain to accompany him in the execution chamber. Justice Kagan dissents, "I think that decision profoundly wrong."
Kagan writes: “'The clearest command of the Establishment Clause ... is that one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.' Larson v. Valente, 456 U. S. 228, 244 (1982). But the State’s policy does just that."
Kagan: "A Christian prisoner may have a minister of his own faith accompany him into the execution chamber to say his last rites. But if an inmate practices a different religion—whether Islam, Judaism, or any other—he may not die with a minister of his own faith by his side."
Over the coming years, a conservative #SCOTUS majority will likely invoke "religious freedom" to eviscerate core protections against discrimination. It may invoke that same principle to undermine key protections for juveniles, women, and other vulnerable groups.
But as we saw in the #TravelBan case and as we've seen again tonight, the conservative majority has a mighty peculiar view of "religious freedom." In their hands, the Constitution's promise of religious neutrality too often vanishes when it is most desperately needed.
It is cruel and unconstitutional to sentence a man to die through procedures that deny his faith while privileging another. Whatever your views on the death penalty, surely we can all agree that this is the wrong way to administer it.
In Glossip v. Gross, Alito decried a "guerrilla war against the death penalty." Perhaps it is a desire to uphold the death penalty at every turn, and to beat back every conceivable challenge, that motives tonight's grave injustice.
But to paraphrase Sotomayor's dissent in Glossip, "the contortions necessary to save this particular [execution] protocol are not worth the price." As a nation, we can do better. As our highest court, #SCOTUS should have done better.
