The Supreme Court, including the newest member Amy Coney Barrett, heard oral arguments in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia today. It’s a complicated case, but at its most basic, the question is whether the City of Philadelphia can refuse to give money to a Catholic charity that does foster care work for them, because the Catholic charity discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation (read as "because of their gayness, gays can’t be suitable foster parents). This is yet another case where the ever-victimized religious right wields the Free Exercise Clause as a sword, claiming it is their Constitutional Rights to discriminate against gay people and attempt to punish them for being gay.
One important aspect of the case is that it gives the Supreme Court the chance to overrule/severely limit Employment Division v. Smith, a Supreme Court case that established that the free exercise clause does not require religious exemptions from laws that are “neutral and generally applicable”. (As an aside, it is pretty telling about the last 30 years in America and the Supreme Court that the Smith case was written by conservative Justice Scalia, while, now, the conservatives on the court are even further right and want to overrule it for a more religious deferment test). Alito and Kavanaugh are clearly interested in overruling/severely limiting Smith by holding that if the law includes a single secular exception (I’m a bit stunned since there doesn’t appear to be one in the Fulton case), then it must meet strict scrutiny if it limits a religious belief.
One additional potential outcome is that the conservative court will no longer consider (or give it merely lip-service) the harm allowing a special privilege to religious beliefs (I’m still stumped as to why “you sin, therefore we should be able to be assholes to you” is a religious belief) would do to the States’ (and society’s) goals of equality, freedom, and the proper care of children. There are many studies (you can start with HRC’s report), that indicate that allowing discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation will do severe damage to the foster children and the goals of providing them safe and healthy homes. And I could find no studies (I should say none that haven’t been debunked as garbage) that find same sex parents are worse than heterosexual parents because of their sexual orientation.
The statement of the case raises other issues too: " Whether free exercise plaintiffs can only succeed by proving a particular type of discrimination claim — namely that the government would allow the same conduct by someone who held different religious views — as two circuits have held, or whether courts must consider other evidence that a law is not neutral and generally applicable, as six circuits have held; (2) whether Employment Division v. Smith should be revisited; and (3) whether the government violates the First Amendment by conditioning a religious agency’s ability to participate in the foster care system on taking actions and making statements that directly contradict the agency’s religious beliefs."
This case, and the cases that will inevitably come if they overrule Smith and/or find for the gay haters, illustrates one of the major reasons the Republicans fought so hard, showed such dishonor, and lied so much to get more federal judges that are tuned to their side appointed to the bench. So they can roll back the protections we’ve enjoyed for the last 60 years or so, and undo the judiciary as a bullwark against the tyranny of the majority. It’s gonna get worse before it gets better.
TLDR: The Fulton v. Philly case will likely, given this court, strengthen the use of the free exercise clause as a weapon against homosexuals. And that is bad. And, in this particular case, will cause direct harm to not just potential homosexual parents, but to the children who need their help.