Overview
- Justice Neil Gorsuch, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017, told PBS’s Firing Line over the weekend that the United States was founded on religious pluralism and the First Amendment’s ban on an established religion.
- Gorsuch explicitly pushed back on recent assertions by Vice President JD Vance and other Christian nationalist voices that Christianity is the country’s founding creed, saying that claim is “demonstrably not true.”
- The remarks drew strong online backlash from MAGA-aligned commentators and praise from critics of Christian nationalism, exposing a growing rift between some political conservatives and members of the conservative judiciary.
- Reporting links Gorsuch’s comments to recent Trump-era policy moves and state actions that expand religious expression in public life, including recommendations from the Religious Liberty Commission and new classroom rules in several states.
- Public polling shows many Americans support enforcing separation of church and state, and the exchange could affect politics and policy by sharpening scrutiny of efforts to give religion a larger role in government and schools.