NBC: Alabama May Allow Church to Form Own Police Force

[Mr. Reactionary]

This is a tricky issue for me. Given that some private, nonreligious schools have been granted this power, denying that same power to another school solely because it is controlled by a religious group is clearly discrimination against the religious which is unconstitutional. At the same time, the Supreme Court has held that government cannot "substitute the unilateral and absolute power of a church for the reasoned decisionmaking of a public legislative body acting on evidence and guided by standards on issues with significant economic and political implications, and thus enmesh churches in the processes of government and create the danger of political fragmentation and divisiveness on religious lines," Larkin v. Grendel's Den, 459 us at 16. If the State does allow the church to maintain some sort of sanctioned police force, it'll pretty much need to be limited to the school parts and have very narrow and well defined powers, much like the jails at Philadelphia Eagles stadium. There may be a need for a college to detain an unruly person in a cell until its convenient for the local Police to pick them up; at the same time giving too much discretionary power to private police (religious or not) is bad kool-aid.

[Mr. Reactionary]

I'm just wondering why they can't have the state post some units up in that area permanently and the church can hire some private security.

If we did everything the simple way, we'd never have anything to argue about.