This is the Gator Daily Podcast for Wednesday, April 19th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Does the government giving used tires to a church daycare playground violate the establishment clause of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court today takes up the case of Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia versus

Pauly.

Trevor Burris, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, comments on the case.

If you had to pick one statement of what this case is about, is this about separation of church and state,

or is it about religious discrimination? I would go. about

religious discrimination?

I would go with religious discrimination.

It's a really kind of bizarre case because it came from such an innocuous

beginning.

We have a playground, an attempt to make playground safer,

using old tires to make the playground cushier.

And so this church that had a playground for its daycare, wanted to apply for this state grant program

of the state of Missouri in order to get the tires gifted to the daycare center of the church in order to make their playground safer.

And of course the state comes in and says, we can't do that because that would be essentially

giving money to a religious organization.

And that seems pretty bizarre because this is about playgrounds.

They're not saying fund some Bibles we're going to purchase or is one of the cases that is a previous case of the similar kind of doctrine or give a scholarship to someone that's going to study in seminary. They're not saying any of that, they're just saying, we have a playground

two, it's in the state's interest for it to be safer, so we should get some of this

tire material. And Missouri has this amendment called the Blaine Amendment, which goes back originally to the late 19th century that says no funding of religion whatsoever.

...