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Oklahoma's Senator James Lankford applauded the Supreme Court's 7-2 ruling, in favor of Trinity Lutheran Church and religious freedom, that the state of Missouri was wrong to exclude Trinity Lutheran Church from a program intended to help nonprofits improve the playground at its preschool and daycare center.  Lankford joined House and Senate colleagues in April of last year to submit a friend of the court brief in the case in support of Trinity Lutheran Church.

Lankford says the decision affirms the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion -— to have more than just a belief but to live out your faith without discrimination from the government. As Chief Justice Roberts noted in his opinion, ‘The exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution…and cannot stand’.”