No Catholic served on the Supreme Court until 1836 when Chief Justice Taney assumed the bench. After his death in 1864 none were appointed again until 1894. Justice Brandeis, the first Jewish justice, was confirmed in 1916.
The present composition of the Supreme Court is six Catholics and three Jews. The problem isn't their religion it is that an alignment of five male a Catholic justices on an important Constitutional issue which happens to coincide with the traditional anathema of the Roman Catholic Church to contraception in the Hobby Lobby case undermines public confidence that the federal courts are judicial and not political institutions.
HL actually presents an expansion of First Amendment rights which I might have welcome in another context. However, in thee context of religious zeal today, it will spawn litigation whose aim is to authorize discrimination against gays, women, Muslims, and even Jews. Like Citizens United, another opinion radically upending traditional First Amendment jurisprudence, HL was a mistake for which our nation will long suffer the consequence.
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