Taxpayers and Public Prayer

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito: Evil or Stupid? And Does It Matter?

Tom Flynn in Free Inquiry:

Writing the majority opinion in Harris v. Quinn, a decision announced shortly before Hobby Lobby that weakened public-sector labor unions, Associate Justice Samuel Alito actually wrote: “Except in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support.”

Alito had in mind dues-paying union members whose unions might take political positions to which they object.

Obviously, one could scarcely imagine Alito writing the same sentence in regard to, say, nonreligious taxpayers compelled to subsidize legislatures that open their sessions with sectarian prayer!