“Justice Stevens is an icon — a thoughtful, perceptive justice who understands the role of church-state separation in American life,” said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “It is vitally important that President Obama choose a high court nominee who understands that government may not meddle in matters of religion.”
The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty praised Stevens as “a friend of church-state separation,” but criticized his siding with a 1990 ruling that allowed Oregon anti-drug laws to halt the use of peyote, a hallucinogenic drug, in Native American religious ceremonies.
J. Brent Walker, the committee’s executive director, said he hopes Obama will nominate a successor “who will be willing to permit — or even require — the government’s accommodation of religion in appropriate cases and to respect the autonomy rights of religion and religious organizations.”
