History test shapes church‑state rulings

Courts increasingly resolve establishment‑clause disputes by asking whether the challenged practice is rooted in long‑standing public tradition; that method privileges older monuments and customs and can block new religiously expressive uses of government space even when similar symbols are historically contested. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s Fitzmaurice v. Quincy decision refusing new statues of Saints Michael and Florian illustrates how applying a ‘‘history and tradition’’ lens (after Kennedy v. Bremerton overturned Lemon) can exclude contemporary religious expression from public memorials. — This matters because the doctrinal turn to historical practices reshapes who counts as part of the public civic tradition and thus affects religious pluralism, municipal design, and the politics of public symbolism.