A new study of Supreme Court decisions going back to 1953 shows the nation’s highest tribunal has moved from supporting religious freedom less than half the time to almost always in recent years. “The Roberts Court has ruled in favor of religious organizations far more frequently than its predecessors, over 81% of the time, compared to about 50% for all previous eras since 1953,” report legal scholars Lee Epstein and Eric Posner Jr. in the latest edition of the University of Chicago’s Supreme Court Review. “In most of these cases, the winning religion was a mainstream Christian organization, whereas in the past pro-religion outcomes more frequently favored minority or marginal religious organizations,” the study said. “A statistical analysis suggests that this transformation is largely the result of changes in the Court’s personnel: A majority of Roberts Court justices are ideologically conservative and religiously devout—a significant break from the past,” the …