It goes without saying that we are, as the not-actually-Chinese curse has it, living in interesting times. The Supreme Court will likely soon hear not only challenges to individual Trump administration policies, but to the Constitutional order itself. Can a president refuse to execute laws passed by Congress? And if the Supreme Court orders him to do so, what happens if he refuses?

This is all uncharted territory—and, for the Court’s six-person conservative majority, presents a conflict between judicial principles and political affiliations.

That same conflict is present in a lawsuit filed this month by twenty-seven progressive religious denominations, demanding that places of worship be exempt from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids. Doctrinally, this challenge is not unlike many that have prevailed at the Court in recent years. But politically, the poles are reversed.

Over the last fifteen years, the Court has massively expanded the scope of religious exemptions to laws, almost entirely for ideologically conservative claimants demanding exemptions from ideologically progressive laws. In Hobby Lobby v. Burwell (2014), the Court held, for the first time, that a religious actor (and a corporation, at that) could be exempt from a law even if doing so placed a burden on someone else—in that case, women seeking to have contraception covered by their insurance plans, which the company did not want to pay for.

That judicial earthquake has had a number of aftershocks. In the Masterpiece Cakeshop case (2018), the Court said that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission shouldn’t have ruled against Jack Phillips, a religious baker who refused to bake a cake for a same-sex couple. And in Fulton v. Philadelphia (2021), the Court ruled that a Catholic charity could turn away gay prospective foster parents, even though it was receiving state money.

All of these cases were based on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA (that’s pronounced RIF-rah), which changed the standard of review for such cases, making it very hard for the government to restrict the free exercise of religion. Some would be surprised to know that RFRA was originally passed with broad, bipartisan support, and was thought of as a safeguard for minority religions. It was passed after a wildly unpopular 1990 decision, Employment Division v. Smith, in which the Court upheld the firing of two Native Americans who had consumed psychedelic peyote, in accordance with the teachings of their religion.

But in the last twenty years, it’s not minority religionists who have brought these RFRA cases—it’s conservative Christians. And not random, uncoordinated conservative Christians, but a nationally coordinated campaign funded in large part by the dark-money-funded network of Leonard Leo, which also helped put the justices in place  to get Roe v. Wade overturned.

Over the last fifteen years, the Court has massively expanded the scope of religious exemptions to laws, almost entirely for ideologically conservative claimants demanding exemptions from ideologically progressive laws.

Is what’s good for the goose also good for the gander? Is religious liberty for liberals, as well as conservatives? We may be about to find out.

“The Trump administration threatens to violate sacred places of worship from living out their commandments to welcome ‘the stranger’ as instructed by our scriptures,” says noted religious progressive Jim Wallis, who directs the Georgetown Center for Faith and Justice, which is leading the current charge. “To do so is an egregious assault on free exercise of religion in violation of both the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The filing of this lawsuit … marks a new chapter in the historic legacy of faith communities standing up for their scriptural obligations in defense of religious liberty and justice for the most marginalized.”

Wallis is right that this is a new chapter. There is some recent precedent for progressives using RFRA in this way: a handful of lawsuits against state abortion bans, filed by religious claimants arguing that their religious freedom was being violated. Some of these have succeeded: because Indiana’s abortion ban has no exception for when a woman’s health is at risk, for example, a court held that it contradicted the teachings of many religions (Judaism, for example), and ordered religious claimants exempt from the law. Many other such challenges are working their way through the court system.

But the new lawsuit is the first of this magnitude. Officially, it’s called Mennonite Church v. Department of Homeland Security, but other plaintiffs include the Episcopal Church, the AME Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, the New York conference of the United Methodist Church, and the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist denominations of Judaism.

On paper, the case is strong. For over thirty years, the Department of Homeland Security and its predecessors regarded places of worship as “sensitive locations” that immigration officers would not enter except in very rare circumstances. Then, on January 20, 2025, this policy was rescinded. (In typical form for the Trump administration, the rescission order is weirdly colloquial, directing ICE officers to “use discretion along with a healthy dose of common sense” in deciding whether to enter a church.)

The new policy has already been put into practice: on January 26, ICE agents attempted to enter a Pentecostal church in suburban Atlanta, were locked out by church attendees, then buzzed the ankle bracelet of a legal-resident asylum seeker, Wilson Velasquez, demanding that he come outside, where he was arrested and taken away.

This, the denominations that have signed the complaint allege, burdens the exercise of religion. The complaint is filled with theology: “Welcoming the stranger, or immigrant, is a central tenet of the Jewish religion, mentioned 36 times in the Torah—more than any other teaching.” And: “The Christian Plaintiffs claim their identity as citizens of God’s kingdom and reject all hierarchies of race, language, nationality, and legal status as anathema to the original unity given to people by God. Their Biblical call to love their neighbors … makes no distinction based on immigration status.”

And surely, if “sensitive places” could be off-limits for thirty years, there’s no compelling reason the government has to expose them now.

But all that is in principle. In practice, the Supreme Court has never ruled for a religious claimant when national security is at stake. It did rule, 9-0, that the state of Arkansas had to allow a Muslim prison inmate to grow a beard, despite (rather absurd) security rules. And it has ruled for indigenous users of psychedelics. But this is a case in which the Trump administration is alleging a national emergency—without any data, but nonetheless.

And, to put it bluntly, these are liberal religionists objecting to a conservative governmental policy, instead of the other way around. Will the Court’s six conservatives be consistent with their principles, or their politics?

That’s a question they will face many times this year.