The U.S. Supreme Court justices are rolling back the sleeves of their robes to wrestle with yet another church and state case this term. The justices should be prepared for some heavy lifting. The court already has heard argument in a case involving a cross set up on federal land in the Mojave Desert, and should rule on it later this term. Early in December, the justices agreed to hear and decide a separate dispute between a San Francisco law school and the Christian Legal Society.

The case pits the law-driven obligation of a school, a public entity, to ban discrimination against gays and lesbians and the right of a religious student group to follow biblical condemnation of homosexual activity.

The high court has a history of jurisprudence requiring schools to treat religious organizations like secular groups. But those previous cases were largely decided 5-4, the new case accepted by the Supreme Court has its own particular characteristics and Justices Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s most junior members who did not participate in those earlier cases, are still question marks.

Alito “is inclined to the view of the First Amendment that the government is not intended to be hostile to religion,” Douglas W. Kmiec, a law professor at Pepperdine University in California and a leading supporter of allowing more religious activity in public life, told The New York Times in 2005 when Alito was tapped for the high court. “It is intended to be accommodating when it can.” Kmiec served with Alito in the U.S. Justice Department.

But as a judge before joining the Supreme Court, Alito did not have the opportunity to rule in a case where the use of public money by religious groups is at issue, the Times said

Other analysts point out Alito has cited the three-pronged “Lemon test” when deciding at least one case as a judge: A government action must have a secular purpose; it must neither advance nor inhibit religion and it must avoid “excessive entanglement” between government and religion.

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