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Constitutional Law

Scalia: God has been good to US because 'we have done him honor'

Justice Antonin Scalia

Our country’s constitutional traditions do not require government to be neutral between religion and nonreligion, Justice Antonin Scalia said on Saturday in a speech to Catholic high school students.

Scalia said government can’t favor one religion over another, but government has been allowed to support religion over nonreligion for hundreds of years. That historical norm changed with rulings in the 1960s, Scalia said. The New Orleans Times-Picayune, the New Orleans Advocate and the Associated Press have stories on Scalia’s speech to students in Metairie, Louisiana. How Appealing notes the stories.

Scalia said Congress could require equal treatment of religion and nonreligion. But “don’t cram it down the throats of an American people that has always honored God on the pretext that the Constitution requires it.”

Scalia also said the United States has benefited because of its support for religion. “God has been very good to us,” Scalia said. “One of the reasons God has been good to us is that we have done him honor. … Unlike the other countries of the world that do not even invoke his name, we do him honor—in presidential addresses, in Thanksgiving proclamations and in many other ways.”