There is only one Supreme Court of the United States, but after listening to yesterday’s oral arguments in Ramirez v. Collier, you might be forgiven for wondering if there are now suddenly two of them, running amok across the judicial landscape. The Supreme Court with which most Americans are familiar is extraordinarily friendly to religious liberty claims and the interests of spiritually motivated plaintiffs. The Supreme Court that heard oral arguments in Ramirez, on the other hand, regarded those claims with suspicion and disinterest.
John Henry Ramirez, the plaintiff, is a death-row prisoner in Texas. The Lone Star State had permitted a spiritual adviser to be present in the execution chamber when prisoners died for the last 40 years but abruptly changed this rule in 2019. Ramirez and other prisoners sued the state to reverse this rule change and won concessions from the state in exchange for dropping the lawsuit. But as the months drew closer to Ramirez’s execution date, Texas began imposing new restrictions on the adviser’s ability to speak to and touch a prisoner as he dies, prompting Ramirez to relaunch his lawsuit.
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