In its reporting on the United States Supreme Court decision in Kennedy v Bremerton School District— issued this morning, CNN reported that this ruling “reinforces a modern court pattern favoring religious conservatives and a greater mingling of church and state.

Overall, the decision reflected the conservative majority’s view that the voices of religious believers are being squelched ….

Monday’s ruling threatens a series of decisions back to 1962 that have forbidden official-sponsored school prayer. The ruling also comes less than a week after the same 6-3 ideologically split court declared that states subsidizing private education must include religious schools.

In both cases, the majority put an emphasis on the First Amendment’s ‘free exercise’ guarantee and minimized its prohibition on government ‘establishment of religion’ ….

The court outright discarded a traditional ‘endorsement’ test and simultaneously downplayed the possibility of student coercion ….

Read complete article free on CNN, titled “How the Supreme Court is dismantling the separation of church and state,” by CNN legal analysis and Supreme Court biographer Joan Biskupic.