“Religious freedom is under attack in many places because it is dangerous to those who want to have complete power,” Alito said. “It also probably emerges from something dark and deep in human DNA — a tendency to distrust and dislike people who are not like ourselves,” he added. His speech comes a month after the end of a blockbuster term in which the court’s majority not only ended the federal right to abortion, but also ruled in favor of religious conservatives in two cases. Alito delivered the keynote address for Notre Dame Law School’s Religious Freedom Initiative. Most of the speech was devoted to the broad discussion of how religious freedom has been challenged throughout history. Alito did not discuss the leak of the abortion decision he wrote — Dobbs v. He did so by expressing his disapproval of foreign leaders who had criticized the opinion. “I’ve had the honor this term of writing, I think, the only Supreme Court decision in the history of this institution that has been criticized by a whole line of foreign leaders,” Alito said, noting that they felt “very good about commenting on American law.” He noted that one of the critics was UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who announced his plan to resign in early July, days after the opinion was issued. “He paid the price,” Alito said to laughter and applause. He also criticized French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for their comments criticizing opinion. Dripping with sarcasm, Alito told the audience that what really “hurt” him was when Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, “addressed the United Nations and appeared to compare ‘whose name may not be spoken’ to the Russian attack on Ukraine.” Returning to religious freedom, Alito said a challenge is to “convince people that religious freedom is worth defending if they don’t think religion is a good thing worth protecting.” He said such an effort could involve focusing on how religion promotes “domestic tranquility.” “It provides a way for religiously diverse people to hold together and flourish,” he said, noting that “the American experience illustrates this well.” He also pointed to the enormous charity work being done by religious groups and people of faith. In 2021, the court said Philadelphia violated the First Amendment when it froze the contract of a Catholic agency that refused to work with same-sex couples as potential foster parents because the agency believes marriage should be between a man and a woman. Alito wrote separately to complain that the court had not gone far enough in his opinion and that it should have made it much more difficult for the government to enforce laws that burden the religious beliefs of some individuals. “The Court has issued a decision that leaves religious liberty in a confused and vulnerable state,” Alito wrote at the time. In the term just ended, however, the court twice ruled in favor of religious conservatives. On one occasion he sided with a public high school football coach who tried to pray on the 50-yard line after games. In another he said Maine cannot exclude religious schools from tuition assistance programs open to public and private schools. Alito ended his speech in Rome with a reference to scripture. He said that “defenders of religious liberty, who ‘come out wise as serpents and harmless than doves’ can expect to find hearts open to their message.”
