Opinion | One Big Decision Awaits the Supreme Court

The most important decision the Supreme Court’s justices will make in the new term that begins on Monday transcends the questions presented in any of its many cases.It is whether the court will resume or refrain from injecting itself into the country’s culture wars.Although it may be hard at this point to remember anything about the court’s last term aside from the presidential immunity decision with which it ended, the fact is that the term was largely devoid of culture war material.

The justices stopped short of ruling on the merits of the two abortion cases they had initially agreed to decide.And there were no decisions that dealt explicitly with religion, though, of course, nearly every anti-abortion law, such as Idaho’s Defense of Life Act at issue in one of those cases, can be traced to a religious view of when life begins.That hiatus can’t last.

Dozens of religion cases are making their way through the federal and state judicial systems, many filed by plaintiffs with the Supreme Court in mind.That is hardly surprising.

The court’s recent decisions, including those in favor of a football coach who commandeered the 50-yard line for public prayer and a web designer whose religion supposedly prevented her from creating wedding sites for same-sex couples, have emboldened those seeking to elevate the role of religion in public life.Further, these individuals and organizations have found ardent allies among judges named to the lower federal courts by President Donald Trump.Several years ago, I used the phrase “grievance conservatism” to describe Justice Samuel Alito’s odd assertion, made in a 2020 speech to the Federalist Society, that “in certain quarters, religious liberty is fast becoming a disfavored right.” Grievance conservatism, I wrote, is “fueled by a belief that even when it’s winning, it’s losing, and losing unfairly.” Surveying the current landscape, however, I think the phrase is due for a refinement.

What we are seeing...