Lots will be written about the decision today in Masterpiece Cakeshop. Here is something small. I was struck by another 7-2 decision in a religious freedom case. The individual justices’ voting patterns in those cases are fairly uniform too. Hobby Lobby was 7-2 on the question of corporate personhood under RFRA (JJ. Sotomayor/Ginsburg in dissent). Trinity Lutheran was 7-2 (JJ. Sotomayor/Ginsburg in dissent). And now Masterpiece Cakeshop is 7-2 (JJ. Sotomayor/Ginsburg in dissent). Many, but not all, of these decisions feature concurrences by JJ. Kagan and/or Breyer. In addition, both Holt v. Hobbs and Zubik v. Burwell, though unanimous as to outcome, featured pointed concurrences in a 7-2 pattern (JJ. Sotomayor/Ginsburg in concurrence).

The asterisk above is for Establishment Clause cases, the last of which was Town of Greece v. Galloway in 2014. Those always tend to return us to the more familiar 5-4 configuration.