Technically, the entire bill of rights applies only to the Federal government, not the states. Many of the individual rights within have been incorporated via the 14th Amendment to restrict the state governments too by the supreme court. I don't know if the establishment clause has been incorporated or not. If not, it would be constitutional for NC (or any state) to establish a state religion, though it would probably lead in short order to a supreme court case incorporating the establishment clause to the states.

It's a resolution. Not a bill. It hasn't passed. It won't pass. If it does pass, it's unconstitutional. It's ridiculous.

Those are my thoughts.

rs2 -- After looking it up, it appears that Everson v. Board of Education (a Supreme Court case in 1947) was the first time that the Establishment Clause was bound to the states, citing the 14th Amendment as justification. It's been established legal precedent now for just over 66 years.

r2, its illegal for any level of government to endorse a specific religion.

@ 2ndwhiteline: based on the court case cited by jmbostwick, yes. But if you didn't have the 14th Amendment, it wouldn't be. The constitution applies to the federal government only except where it specifically targets the states.

But...you do have the 14th Amendment. So why bother with hypotheticals?

Last time they tried that Andrew Jackson sent a shit ton of troops their way and it got them to shut up for 200 years.

+1 bo_sox

I second jimgov's +1 of bo_sox.

Interesting how the courts have extended federal law to the states. At the time the constitution was written, many states, signatories to the constitution, had state religions. Here's a link to a chart showing which states had state religions, and from what year to what year. It also has very interesting excerpts from the laws of those states regarding religion. http://undergod.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=69

The Supreme Court previously held, in Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. 243 (1833), that the Constitution's Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government, that states were free to enforce statutes that restricted the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights, and that the federal courts could not interfere with the enforcement of such statutes. Gitlow v. New York partly reversed that precedent and began a trend toward its nearly complete reversal. The Supreme Court now holds that almost every provision of the Bill of Rights applies to both the federal government and the states.

The Supreme Court relied on the "due process clause" of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits a state from depriving "any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." The Court stated that "For present purposes we may and do assume that" the rights of freedom of speech and freedom of the press were "among the fundamental personal rights and 'liberties' protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the states" (at 666).

The Court used the doctrine first enunciated in Gitlow in other cases, such as De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353 (1937), Wolf v. Colorado, 338 U.S. 25 (1949), and Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), to extend the reach of the Bill of Rights. Constitutional scholars refer to this as the "incorporation doctrine," meaning that the Supreme Court has identified rights specified in the Bill of Rights and incorporated them into the liberties covered by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitlow_v._New_York

The above was a quote.

@bo_sox,

"Last time they tried that Andrew Jackson sent a shit ton of troops their way and it got them to shut up for 200 years."

Huh? What the heck are you talking about?

Anyway, as to the law, yes, of course it's unconstitutional, because the fourteenth amendment does incorporate most of the bill of rights against the states (a concept that people were already aware of at the time of its ratification).