In a 7-2 decision the Court has
ruled that a cross that has stood on public land for nearly a century can continue to stand because taking it down would be an act of hostility towards religion which isn't part of the Constitution.
“It has become a prominent community landmark, and its removal or radical alteration at this date would be seen by many not as a neutral act but as the manifestation of ‘a hostility toward religion that has no place in our Establishment Clause traditions,’”
This is a far bigger decision than many people realize because it declares that a hostility to religion is unConstitutional.
The clear intent of the Framers was that the government should encourage religious liberty but not allow any one religion to have the special endorsement of the government. Essentially the Framers didn't want a repeat of the Church of England fiasco in England where all other Christians faced oppression.
The Framers never envisioned a "wall of separation" as the modern court has created. In fact Jefferson, who created that phrase which isn't in the Constitution, felt that it was perfectly legal for the government to fund Catholic priests to minister to Native Americans so it's clear that his concept of a "wall" isn't the one that modern leftists are so eager to invoke.
Given that the entire modern atheist push to silence religious speech in public is based on an unquestionable hostility towards religion this decision might signal a new blooming of freedom in America.
Atheism is a faith based belief system similar to Christianity because it is based on beliefs that can't be proven to be true.
For example according to Professor Hawking if there is no god then we are purely material beings. That in turn means that all our thoughts are nothing more than chemical reactions in our brains. Hawking points out that if that's the case then we have no control over our thoughts; they are determined by the laws of physics. But if we have absolutely no control over our thoughts we clearly can't have free will.
Yet we all know based on what goes on in our heads that we do in fact have free will. That could be an illusion but until atheists can prove that to be the case they have to accept, based on faith, that it is an illusion.
Similarly if atheists are right then everything in the universe, including the existence of the universe, must be explicable by purely materialistic processes. Given that science is a process that says nothin about what it will or won't be able to explain atheists must accept on faith that everything we see is in fact based on purely materialistic processes.
Further to be an atheist one must reject the historical accuracy of the Bible even though one can't prove that to be the case.
Atheism is just like all other religions because it depend on beliefs based on faith not facts.
Note that religions don't have to believe in god. Buddhists for example don't believe in god but everyone considers Buddhism to be a religion.
While no one questions the rights of atheists to express their faith in the public square to many dishonest judges and leftists have demanded that people of other faiths be silenced.
Those people disingenuously claim that a teacher speaking about Jesus will be viewed as the State endorsing Christianity while a teacher speaking about an atheist champion like Nietzsche won't be viewed as the State endorsing atheism.
The reason the 3% of Americans who are atheists have been so successful at persecuting religion in America is that a much larger number of Democrats want to eliminate religion because religion puts a limit on the power of the government. At our founding we the people declared that we have inalienable rights given to us by God. That limits how much power Democrats can have and they hate that limitation so they gladly join with atheists to push religion into a closet.