But the problem is, the court doesn’t get it. The justices may know the Constitution backward and forward, but what they don’t appear to know much about are the lives and lifestyles of the people for whom they work. In trying to regulate school prayer, the court forces a very awkward division between the deeply enmeshed aspects of an entire way of life. In trying to preserve religious freedom, the court is attacking it at its core.

I grew up in Sherman, Texas, a Bible Belt town situated at the heart of high school football country. On Friday nights in the fall, nearly every resident of Grayson County packed into Bearcat Stadium, the very nexus of town life. The field was lighted bright against warm night skies full of mayflies and mosquitoes. The metal bleachers were packed with people clad in burgundy and white sweatshirts, sporting giant mums with ribbons and bells. There was yelling, screaming, shouting, grunting, singing, cheering, hooping, squealing, whistling, grunting — and praying.

For school-age kids, attendance was mandatory: I mean it literally was required, for some of our classes, to attend a certain number of games in the name of public service. Games also were a compulsory social event, where turbulent conflicts of status and friendship were pursued with impunity. We stared in awe at the wildly bouncing cheerleaders with their high hair and silver jewelry, while keeping an eye on their male counterparts, the Billy Bob Boys (no joke), who did back handsprings up and down the sidelines. We gaped, wide-eyed, at the militaristic precision of the Sherman Bearcat Drill Team, clad in satin and matching white boots and hats. We spilled giant Cokes and gloopy cheese nachos on the concrete stands.

Right before the game started there was a warbling, heartfelt rendition of the national anthem. Then came the more solemn voice on the loudspeaker, choked with giddy gravitas, to lead a blessing of the teams and a prayer for the health of the players and for God’s glory to be made manifest right there on the field. (Behind the scenes, the coaches presided over pre-game huddles in which they called on a higher power to give their young players strength.)

How will the scene change when the moment of prayer, a time to exult in God, family and football, is removed from the ritual? I imagine a bitter and rebellious silence when that conspicuous gap in the night’s program comes around, a moment of focused anger and indignation. How strange to think of that central blessing as being repressed by some invisible abstract influence. (I also imagine that people will find a way around it — the loudspeaker will probably announce an optional prayer meeting before the game.)

Religious conservatives, of course, already have expressed their fury at the court’s ruling. “The government’s ‘benign neutrality’ toward religion in this country is now nothing short of malevolent hostility,” announced Jan LaRue of the conservative Family Research Council to the press after the decision.

And I can see what she means. For all the court’s attempts to keep schools and government neutral on the issue of religion, there is nothing neutral about this ruling. And the proposed compromise — that individuals are free to pray any time they choose as long as they don’t organize prayer at public school events — effectively assaults the nature of their prayer.

Even as I revel in the decision’s consistency with our country’s unflagging commitment to secular government, I know that it is a slap in the face to the culture of Texas and places like it. To fervently religious Texans, prayer is a group activity that reaches out to everyone and everything around them. They believe that all of their work and leisure is supposed to belong to God. To separate religion from shared daily life is to compromise that religious conviction.

Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the verdict, “Worship is a responsibility and a choice committed to the private sphere.” No, it’s not, not in Texas: Worship is as public as it is private. Prayer is as constant as conversation. It is the backbone of social life.

Was prayer optional at those football games? No, it wasn’t. (Not unless you were to put your hands over your ears and brave some prodding from your peers, I guess.) But neither were the games, when you think about it. That was part of living in Texas. Any dissent happened, well, in private. That was the way things were. But that is not to say that Texans didn’t believe that all folks shouldn’t be allowed to live in peace within their own faith. This is America after all.

In Sherman, there was one Jewish synagogue, a small, inconspicuous one-story brick building that happened to sit right next to the stadium. One day our Sunday school class took a tour there and learned about the Torah. The rabbi, bless his heart, mentioned that he often competed with the ruckus of that other ritual next door as he led the Friday night Sabbath prayer. But he didn’t mention any lawsuits.

Somehow the Jewish worshipers dealt with that ironic circumstance of real estate (and with missing those football games). Maybe it wasn’t easy; maybe they didn’t like it one bit. But it doesn’t seem as if the Supreme Court’s decision will help either group of religious folks deal with that situation any better than they do now.

There just isn’t any way to extract religion from the daily lives or the culture of the people living in deeply religious communities. Not from their school assemblies, their graduation ceremonies, their kids’ sporting events or even, sometimes, their jobs. When you’re down in the thick of the scene, a rule of law set to regulate whether people pray or not feels much more intrusive and artificial than simply finding a quiet way to bow out. To the people who want like the devil to pray, legal intervention feels foreign, and hostile. And unnecessary.

I’m not saying the court shouldn’t take a stand on the specific ways in which we chose to celebrate our religious freedom. But it’s important to realize that the government’s remedy is a drastic one. It is truly an affront to an entire culture, a way of life. It asks people to radically alter the way they live, to eliminate an important aspect of their lives — presumably for the sake of those who live their lives differently.

It’s rare that I find myself siding with religious conservatives on a social issue. I was happy to leave Texas as soon as I got the chance. But as someone who has lived in this culture, it’s clear to me that for religious tolerance to work, we have to tolerate a certain amount of religion.

But did Judge Jackson hinder his own goals when he ordered that Microsoft’s conduct remedies take effect 90 days after his ruling in the antitrust case?

At least a few experts in legal procedure seem to think so. “Neither Jackson nor the government focused on the timeline problem,” says Andrew Gavil, a law professor at Howard University. “Microsoft is supposed to deal with the remedies in 90 days, which means around the beginning of September. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court won’t decide whether to take the case until October. So what is Microsoft supposed to do? Where can Microsoft go to get relief? The court of appeals is the only option.”

In other words, the court of appeals — which stepped forward this week and agreed to hear the case, even before the judge had a chance to request that the Supreme Court accept the case on a “fast-track” basis — has a darn good excuse to take action, before the Supreme Court even considers what it wants to do.

The appellate court judges could do this because jurisdiction in this case is unclear. “The expediting act [the law that provides for antitrust cases to be fast-tracked] doesn’t specifically tell you that the mere filing of a case before the Supreme Court divests the court of appeal from jurisdiction,” says Gavil.

The Justice Department filed its request to expedite Microsoft’s appeal to the Supreme Court this week. Now Microsoft is due to file a response on Monday, although it seems unlikely that Jackson will be persuaded against sending the case for Supreme Court review.

“This is new terrain,” says William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University. “We’ve never had an intersection of the appellate rules of procedure, the expediting act and an order that has deadlines, mandating that Microsoft radically alter its behavior before the Supreme Court has a chance to take or refuse the case.”

Of course, both sides have been working furiously to get the case heard in their court of preference since last week when Jackson issued his order to break-up Microsoft. First, Microsoft filed a stay, asking the court to postpone the remedies ordered by Jackson until the appeal was heard. But it failed to file the appeal. This kept the Justice Department at bay: procedural rules dictate that a motion for expedited appeal to the Supreme Court can’t be filed before the notice of appeal.

But Judge Jackson, taking the advice detailed in a Justice Department motion, hasn’t yet ruled on the stay. Instead he replied that “consideration of an order of a stay pending appeal is premature in that no notice of appeal has yet been filed.”

In the meantime, Microsoft has, of course, filed its notice of appeal; it also went over Jackson’s head to file a motion in the appellate court, asking the judges to postpone the initiation of the conduct remedies, which are due to start September 6. The appellate court agreed to hear the case, even as a flurry of motions from both Microsoft and the Justice Department tried to sway the court toward their side.

So what happens next? The appeals court could begin to act, testing the law and thwarting the government’s hope of an expedited appeal. Or “Judge Jackson could extend the stay until such time as they know whether or not the Supreme Court will take the case,” says Gavil.

But that’s pretty tough to imagine. If there’s one thing that Jackson has learned during this case it’s that the software business moves at light speed, and that if his rulings are to alter the way Microsoft does business, he’ll have to find a way to make judicial process match that pace.

The court, in a sense, punted the issue to Congress. Lawmakers are debating legislation that could give patients broader rights to sue HMOs.

“With this ruling, the Supreme Court isn’t just asking for congressional action, they are shouting at the top of their lungs for us to act,” said Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., co-sponsor of the legislation in the House.

“No other industry in America has immunity from liability for its mistakes, and HMOs don’t deserve immunity either,” Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a statement. “Nothing is more likely to persuade an HMO to do the right thing than the knowledge it will be held accountable if it doesn’t.”

The court struck down an appeals court ruling allowing a woman to sue her HMO after the company’s delay in diagnosing her stomach condition resulted in a ruptured appendix.

“Congress, which has promoted the formation of HMOs for 27 years, may choose to restrict its approval to certain preferred forms, but the [Supreme Court] would be acting contrary to congressional policy if it were to entertain [a] claim portending wholesale attacks on existing HMOs solely because of their structure,” Justice David Souter wrote on behalf of the court.

The managed care industry, not surprisingly, cited the decision as a major victory.

“There is a recognition here of the value that (HMOs) bring to the health care system,” American Association of Health Plans spokesperson Susan Pisano said. The court recognized, too, “what a different decision would have done in terms of unraveling the system,” she said.

Nearly a decade ago, Cynthia Herdrich sued the Carle Clinic in Illinois. The HMO had made her wait eight days for an ultrasound after she complained of stomach pains. While she was waiting, Herdrich’s appendix ruptured, causing an infection that required surgery.

While Herdrich received a modest malpractice settlement, she also sought to sue Carle for operating in a way that encouraged doctors to delay tests.

Managed care companies have long rewarded physicians who keep a lid on costs by reducing “unnecessary” prescriptions and referrals. HMOs are typically protected from lawsuits for refusing or stalling care by arcane legislation called Employee Retirement Income Security Act. ERISA sets federal standards — and the court’s decision Monday applies to federal courts. Patients may file malpractice claims against doctors or medical facilities in state courts.

A federal judge dismissed Herdrich’s claim, but a federal appeals court allowed her to sue.

Although the court all but invited Congress to act, don’t expect groundbreaking legislation anytime soon. The House passed the Norwood bill last October, but lawmakers have yet to come up with an acceptable way to marry the bill with far narrower legislation drafted by the Senate.

Partisan bickering has bogged down the conference process. Congressional observers say the court’s decision will do nothing to light the fire of lawmakers.

But experts doubt that the Supreme Court justices will agree to expedite a final decision on the case.

“It’s a highly unusual proposition for the Supreme Court to like expedited appeals,” says Eben Moglen, professor of law and legal history at Columbia University. “It likes the advantage of what they call ‘further percolation.’” In other words, the Supreme Court justices generally prefer to first get a second opinion from a three-judge appellate court.

The “fast-track” option has its roots in a 1903 law requiring that all appeals in antitrust cases go straight to the highest court. “The idea was to send these cases straight to the Supreme Court, where they were sure to end up anyway, rather than let them go to [what was then a] new level of jurisdiction,” says Larry Kramer, an antitrust expert and law professor at New York University. “Remember, this is the trust-busting era, the time of Standard Oil,” Kramer says of the period during which the “fast-tracking” law was conceived. “Early Supreme Court cases were extremely important.”

But time passed and the Supreme Court grew ever more busy — it now receives around 5,000 requests each year and reviews about 150 cases. So in 1974, Congress amended the law to give the court discretion to refuse cases or to take them if it deemed them of “general public importance in the administration of justice.”

Since then, the “fast-track” law has been employed only once, following the government’s antitrust case against AT&T in the 1980s, says William Kovacic, a law professor at George Washington University. After the telephone company settled with the federal government, the state of Maryland opposed the settlement arguing that it hindered the state’s right to regulate communications companies. Maryland’s attorney general called for an immediate Supreme Court review, and the justices agreed to hear it. “They took up the case and affirmed the settlement,” Kovacic says.

In every other case, the Supreme Court has declined to interfere with the traditional route from district court to appellate court and only then to its chambers. Moglen says there are several examples of cases that seemed urgent at the time which the Supreme Court has declined to expedite, including the Japanese Electronics Products antitrust case (in which Japanese electronics makers were found to have conspired to eliminate American competitors from the U.S. television market by selling products to U.S. consumers at low prices) and the Pentagon Papers case (in which the Nixon administration tried to prevent the Washington Post from publishing a classified study about U.S. military involvement in Vietnam). These were “both cases that presented the possibility of expedited appeals,” Moglen says, but that failed to convince the justices to break with routine. And more recently, when doubts arose about the legality of forcing Secret Service agents to testify in the Monica Lewinsky trial, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case without appellate input.

Still, there are compelling reasons for the Microsoft case to skip the appellate phase. “It’s a burden on the economy and on Microsoft for it to be delayed,” says Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor and former “special master” in the Microsoft antitrust case.

And Kramer argues that the longer the case draws on the harder it might be on pocketbooks other than Microsoft’s. “It’s not as though the economy as a whole isn’t being affected by the uncertainty surrounding Microsoft,” Kramer says, pointing to the stock market’s roller-coaster reaction to the ongoing developments in the case.

Jackson himself suggests that a quick resolution to the case is needed, and wrote in his “Memorandum and Final Order” that the company “continues to do business as it has in the past, and may yet do to other markets what it has already done in the PC operating system and browser markets.” It’s no secret that the software industry is fast-moving and that if the court lags in making decisions about this case, any suggested remedies might already be rendered moot by the time they take effect.

It’s also no secret that Jackson would rather bypass a conservative appellate court, which overturned his 1998 injunction ordering Microsoft to stop bundling its operating system and browser.

But Jackson’s attempt to move the case along quickly may ultimately backfire.

“What you would have expected Jackson to do was play the game with [Microsoft] for a couple of minutes, to try and get their input on the remedies,” says Kramer. He believes that Jackson’s decision to avoid even a short hearing on the remedies and to confine the process to written statements, could dissuade the justices from hearing the case without letting an appellate court probe the issues more thoroughly. “He just bought the government’s side, with no hearings on remedies or anything.”

Moglen argues that the Supreme Court would be more likely to take the case on a fast-track basis if Microsoft’s appeal hinges on Jackson’s interpretation of antitrust law rather than on the specific remedies. “If the judges think there should be more remedial work done on the case, then why not let the D.C. circuit [court] take it up?” he asks.

Perhaps they will. But the justices could just as easily be convinced that the future of the most powerful company in an industry that is determined to change the world might deserve their prompt attention.

“I think it is the case of the century,” Kovacic says. “But I think the court hears that a lot, probably from everyone.”

Because the case might have been my own, I was at first appalled that the court condemned the rights my grandparents had won, declaring that parents have a “fundamental right to make decisions concerning the care, custody and control” of their children.

Upon further inspection, however, I realized that this strongly worded statement belies the decision’s nuance. Ultimately, the case reveals a court as knotted as any family in the throes of emotional strife. The vote went 6-3, but lacked a single rationale. It stopped short of declaring the Washington law unconstitutional, ruling only on the case at hand and thus leaving the laws of 49 other states intact.

In a chamber known for thunderous decisions — indeed dedicated to them — such restraint is nothing less than remarkable. Defending parental rights, but allowing for case-by-case wiggle room, the court revealed itself to be refreshingly cognizant of divorce’s multiple personalities and of the unintended joys that can come from legally mandated time with people outside the sphere of conception and birth. Perhaps parents, grandparents and everyone else who deals with divorce can learn from their example.

But it won’t be easy. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the majority that “the demographic changes of the past century make it difficult to speak of an average American family,” but forget “average” — it’s much harder to find, define and create a healthy family, which is what divorce forces families to do. With this decision, it’s as if the court has simply decided to wish us luck. If my story is any guide, we’ll need it.

Read Damien Cave’s original story.