Ohio - which has until late next month to file its briefs - signaled it may attack one of the most powerful weapons Congress has to enforce federal civil rights laws in the states: attaching conditions to the money it gives to the states.
"It would radically limit the power of Congress to say, 'If you want our money, you have to use it in a way that is appropriate,' " said a lawyer for the plaintiffs, David Goldberger, a professor of law at the Ohio State University College of Law.
Ohio could also attempt to argue that the federal government has no business regulating religious accommodations, on the hotly disputed theory that the framers of the Constitution intended the Establishment Clause to relegate such matters to the states.
If the court accepted that view, which has some adherents among legal scholars and has received sympathy from at least one member of the bench, Justice Thomas, then states would be free to provide as much or as little accommodation to religious practices as they wished.
It seems to me that God often works in ways that people describe as "unintended consequences".
Yes, thanks for pointing that out.