Can we talk about the role of religion in the Supreme Court? How did you see religion reflected in the rulings this term?

We ended the term with a bunch of very clear wins for religious exercise claims, including a pair of really important cases about allowing religious schools to fire employees as they please under what was once a very narrow doctrine called the ministerial exemption that said that religious schools could decide for themselves who was a minister for their purposes. If you’re a janitor or the driving instructor or teaching algebra, you are now a minister, and it will carve out religious schools from all the civil rights laws.

I found that ruling fascinating because it came just weeks after the Bostockcase, which ruled that you cannot fire gay or trans employees because they’re gay or trans. And it seemed like two steps forward, one step back, where you have a massive civil rights victory, and then you’re saying, OK, but except for these people over here. 

There’s no question that this will create an exception to Bostockthat you could drive a truck through. You can say it’s one step forward, two steps back, or you can say that the exceptions start to swallow the rule and that what we are seeing is a hollowing out of civil rights laws generally. Just as the country is moving toward a bigger, inclusive, more robust sense of who needs to be protected under the law, whether it’s women, LGBTQ workers, workers who are older, we’re seeing an equally effective campaign by religious groups to say they are going to be given by the court a sword to fight that off.

Is this how it should work when you’re compromising—no one is 100 percent happy? Is there an argument to be made for that?

Popular in News & Politics

1. After a Rough Week of Testimony, Stormy Daniels Seems to Have the Upper Hand
2. I Watched Trump’s Lawyers Cross-Examine Stormy Daniels. It Was Painful.
3. Congress’ Perpetual Coup Machine Is Merely Resting
4. The Story About a Worm Eating RFK Jr.’s Brain Is Not As Funny As It Sounds

I think that’s the question. This is without a doubt the most conservative Supreme Court we’ve had since the New Deal. And yet somehow we came to this pretty middle-of-the-road term with huge landmark wins. We haven’t even talked about the DACA rescission, but that was a massive win. It’s clear that this is not the conservative term we feared was coming. I think what you are seeing is partly hard trades, a little bit of horse trading. The John Roberts long game. But the court’s job is to move slowly and deliberately and to not be buffeted around by the winds of whatever hurly-burly political moment they’re in. And what that means is good stuff, right? We had big wins because the court is slow and deliberate, and big losses, especially in the financial documents cases, because the court does things slowly. But the court isn’t just thinking about November. The court is the institution that would very much like to be around and have its lights on and its toilets working in 10 years. And the only way to do that is to have the American public do exactly what the American public is doing this week, which is saying, Well, I have a lot to worry about, but what I don’t have to worry about is the U.S. Supreme Court.

It’s so clear how much more conservative the court is than the people that they’re ostensibly representing.

I think that the person who is more aware of that than anyone else is John Roberts. The justices are mindful of the fact that in a lot of ways they are not necessarily in lockstep with the public. The important thing to say is 99 percent of cases get decided in the appeals courts, and those courts have shifted radically under Donald Trump. I want to be really mindful of the fact that what we’re seeing play out in under a hundred cases in one term at the court is by no means representative of what we’re seeing on the federal courts across the country. That is something we should be watching, and I’m afraid we’re not.

• Supreme Court
• John Roberts
• Judiciary

(责任编辑：新闻中心)