Justice Alito Criticizes Focus on Supreme Court’s Catholic Majority
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. doesn’t understand all the fuss about the U.S. Supreme Court’s Catholic majority.
Speaking Tuesday to an Italian-American law group in Philadelphia, Alito said he thought the Constitution settled the question with its guarantee of religious freedom, the Associated Press reports.
“There has been so much talk lately about the number of Catholics serving on the Supreme Court,” Alito said, according to the AP account. “This is one of those questions that does not die.”
Alito complained about “respectable people who have seriously raised the questions in serious publications about whether these individuals could be trusted to do their jobs.”
Six justices on the nine-member court are Catholics. One of them, Justice Antonin Scalia, is also said to be unhappy with the suggestion that religion may influence the justices’ votes.
